Our Case Was Dismissed.
Our Demand for a Public Accounting Has Not.

On July 28, 2026, Judge Wendy W. Berger of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida dismissed our Third Amended Complaint with prejudice, on the court’s own review, as an impermissible “shotgun pleading.” The court stated that the pleading’s structure prevented it from reaching “even the threshold jurisdictional issue” of standing.

We respectfully and profoundly disagree with that decision.

We name Judge Berger because the decision is hers and the public is entitled to know who made it. Our disagreement is with the ruling — its reasoning and its consequences — not with the person of the judge.

What the ruling was not

There was no trial. There was no discovery. No witness was heard. No internal government email was compelled. No platform-enforcement log was examined. No referral channel, escalation ticket, meeting record, dashboard, data-sharing system, or account-action record was tested through adversarial discovery.

The court did not find that we were never targeted. It did not find that our accounts were not removed, restricted, throttled, demonetized, shadow-banned, or labeled. It did not find that our businesses, audiences, reputations, payment relationships, or ability to reach the public were not harmed. It did not find that any defendant was factually exonerated.

Nor did the court find that we lacked standing. It said the pleading’s structure prevented it from reaching that question at all.

Because the court acted on its own review and terminated all pending motions, none of the defendants’ own defenses — standing, immunity, state action, jurisdiction — was ever ruled upon either. Nothing about the facts of this case was decided, in any direction.

And the court made no finding that we were vexatious litigants, that our claims were frivolous, or that our lawyers failed us. Anyone who says otherwise is not describing the order. They are describing what they wish it said.

The dismissal with prejudice is a serious procedural outcome. We do not deny that. But it was not a finding that the alleged censorship system did not exist. It was not a determination that government pressure played no role in platform decisions. It was not a judgment that the people who publicly named us, called for our deplatforming, or acted against our accounts and livelihoods were vindicated on the facts.

The records were not ours

The ruling exposes a problem every American should understand.

We were required to identify an alleged internal chain of responsibility with high precision: which official, in which agency, communicated what, to which platform, about which plaintiff, and in connection with which moderation action. That detail may ultimately be required to prove a claim. But the records capable of establishing it were never in our hands.

They sit inside government agencies, technology companies, payment processors, intermediary organizations, and the systems through which reports, referrals, recommendations, data, and pressure were transmitted. They include internal correspondence, referral and escalation records, enforcement logs, meeting notes, data-sharing arrangements, account histories, appeal records, dashboards, spreadsheets, and communications about named speakers.

Discovery exists to reach evidence that citizens cannot obtain on their own. We asked for targeted discovery if the court believed additional factual development was needed. We asked for leave to amend if it believed a pleading defect remained. We sought oral argument. The case was ended before discovery could begin.

That is the fundamental Catch-22. Citizens alleging covert public-private censorship can be required to prove the hidden internal chain before they are permitted access to the records that would reveal it. That procedural dynamic risks insulating from review the very evidence most capable of confirming or disproving the allegations. No American, of any viewpoint, should be comfortable with that.

We were named targets

We did not come to court as strangers to this system. We came as people publicly named in it.

Each of us appeared in the “Disinformation Dozen” report published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The report did not simply criticize our views. It expressly urged platforms to deplatform the named individuals, their organizations, and their backup accounts.

The record included a May 6, 2021 White House email discussing the “disinfo dozen,” platform demotion efforts, and reach mitigation. It included a platform record identifying GreenMedInfo.com as an associated Disinformation Dozen domain receiving a 60 percent reduction in distribution. And it included this contrast, which alone warrants scrutiny:

The record also included allegations of individual account removals, restrictions, domain penalties, payment-platform losses, reach reductions, canceled opportunities, professional injury, and business damage affecting each plaintiff. Those allegations should be evaluated against the relevant plaintiff declarations, notices, business records, platform materials, and government records — not dismissed as abstraction.

These documents exist. What they mean — the full chain of who communicated, who decided, who acted, and why — is exactly what discovery and oversight were needed to determine.

The standing issue deserved a hearing

Murthy v. Missouri established an exceptionally demanding standing framework for claims alleging government-induced platform censorship. We believed our case presented what that framework demands: plaintiffs publicly named in a deplatforming campaign; alleged account, domain, business, and payment-platform injuries; government and platform communications referencing the Disinformation Dozen by name; and documentary evidence of reach-reduction measures affecting named targets. The court never reached whether those facts were sufficient.

People, not profiles

Before we were named in a report, we were people with lives and work built over years: writers, physicians, researchers, educators, publishers, entrepreneurs, parents, and community members.

We built our work through speech — writing, publishing, teaching, interviewing, researching, practicing, and participating in public debate. We built audiences one reader, viewer, customer, patient, client, subscriber, and conversation at a time.

The harms did not remain online. The loss of an audience can become loss of income. Loss of income can become staff reductions, canceled opportunities, broken business relationships, loss of payment services, damaged professional standing, family stress, and fear that a searchable public label will follow someone into every future institution, platform, or country.

The damage does not end when a post is removed. For many people, it becomes a continuing condition of life.

Many plaintiffs and members of the public believe that suppressing discussion of medical injuries, risks, treatment questions, and public-health policy contributed to grave harm. That concern is not a judicial finding. It is a reason to preserve records, investigate the consequences of censorship, and ensure that no future public-health response treats dissent as grounds for hidden punishment.

We do not seek immunity from criticism. We seek equal protection from systems that can transform criticism into opaque, coordinated punishment without transparent evidence, notice, due process, or a meaningful opportunity to respond.

Our lawyers answered the call

A word about our lawyers, because we anticipate the insinuations.

They took this case pro bono. They amended the pleadings. They narrowed the litigation, dropped defendants, and reduced the action to four counts. They filed detailed responses to the major dismissal motions. They submitted our declarations. They sought targeted discovery. They sought oral argument. They asked that the court permit a further amendment if it believed any deficiency remained.

We believed in good faith that the amended complaint addressed the court’s concerns. The court concluded otherwise — and we disagree above all with the consequence it chose: termination with prejudice, before any examination of the evidence. The court’s disagreement with a pleading approach is not abandonment, indifference, or incompetence. We regard our lawyers as heroes for undertaking difficult pro bono representation while the most relevant evidence remained inside the institutions being challenged.

The executive branch has recognized the problem

On January 20, 2025, Executive Order 14149 stated that federal departments, agencies, officers, employees, and agents may not act or use federal resources in a manner inconsistent with Americans’ constitutionally protected speech. It directed review of prior federal conduct involving the censorship of protected speech.

Since then, the Department of Justice has announced settlements in separate lawsuits alleging that federal officials induced or coerced social-media companies to suppress disfavored speech. Those matters are distinct from ours and are not adjudications of our claims. But they make a public accounting more necessary, not less.

It cannot be enough for the government to declare, as a matter of policy, that unconstitutional coercion must end while citizens who allege they were named and injured by prior systems are denied access to the records needed to test the facts.

So we ask the executive branch to finish what it started: complete the review directed by Executive Order 14149 — and make its findings public.

Congress must now act

We brought our claims to the federal judiciary because the judiciary is supposed to provide a forum when citizens allege that other institutions have failed them. In our case, we believe the procedural ruling left the constitutional questions and the underlying evidence unexamined.

Because the courts have not reached the evidence, Congress must.

As Congress returns this September, we will transmit formal oversight submissions to the committees of jurisdiction in the House and Senate. We call on those committees to do four things:

1. Preserve and obtain the internal record.

   Issue preservation demands and subpoenas to agencies, contractors, platforms, payment processors, and intermediary organizations for all records involving named targets: emails, chats, meeting notes, referral tickets, escalation logs, dashboards, trusted-flagger submissions, data-sharing arrangements, enforcement records, and communications between government personnel and private companies — and trace the chain of responsibility they reveal: who flagged, who communicated, who acted, and who reported back.

2. Audit government records systems touching First Amendment activity.

   Determine whether agencies maintained records, dashboards, watchlists, or tracking tools describing Americans’ exercise of First Amendment rights — and whether those systems complied with the Privacy Act and other legal safeguards. Our own Privacy Act claim was never examined. Congress can examine the systems themselves.

3. Hold public hearings.

   Hear from named targets, former officials, agency personnel, platform employees, whistleblowers, and civil-liberties advocates across ideological lines — and publish comprehensive findings identifying the architecture, its legal authority or lack of it, the Americans affected, and the corrective action required.

4. Enact enforceable safeguards.

   Pass clear statutory prohibitions on government-induced censorship, transparency and records-retention mandates, notice and appeal rights for affected speakers — and a private right of action, so that the next American named on a list does not face the Catch-22 we faced.

This is not a partisan demand. The same machinery can be directed at journalists, doctors, researchers, labor organizers, parents, religious believers, political dissidents, whistleblowers, and civil-rights advocates of any ideology. The question is not whether Americans may disagree. They must be free to disagree. The question is whether government may use private intermediaries, privileged access, official pressure, and hidden reporting systems to convert disagreement into economic and digital punishment without transparency or due process.

To the platforms and payment processors

You do not need to wait for Congress. Three things are within your power today:

• Provide each named individual with their complete enforcement file — every action, the policy basis for it, and the internal review behind it.
• Disclose every government-originated referral, request, or communication concerning our accounts, domains, organizations, and names.
• Conduct independent review, under your current policies, of the permanent bans, domain penalties, demonetizations, and payment-account closures imposed during this era — restoring what your own present standards cannot justify.

What we will do

Whatever comes next, we will pursue every lawful avenue that remains: formal preservation demands to every entity holding relevant records; congressional and inspector-general oversight submissions; platform disclosure and restoration requests; and continued publication of the documentary record — with sources, with corrections when warranted, and with clear distinctions between court rulings, official documents, platform materials, plaintiff evidence, and allegations.

What you can do

This statement is made on behalf of every American who was censored — of every viewpoint, in every season of this era. If that includes you, or someone you love, here is what we ask:

1. Read the record for yourself.

   We are publishing the court filings, the orders, the platform records, and the government documents — with a public corrections policy — at The Named-Target Record. Do not take our word for anything. Read the documents. Then decide.

2. Ask your representatives for the accounting.

   Contact your representative and both of your senators. The ask is one sentence:

   “Support public hearings, records preservation, and enforceable safeguards — including a private right of action — for Americans censored through government pressure on platforms.”

   Use the Contact Congress tool →

3. If it happened to you, preserve your record and add your voice.

   If you were deplatformed, demonetized, labeled, throttled, or debanked after being flagged or named, preserve everything now — enforcement notices, emails, screenshots, appeal records, payment records, dates. Then submit your account. The full accounting must include every named target — not just twelve.

Without a full accounting — preserved records, disclosed processes, fair procedures, and enforceable limits — this machinery can be rebuilt and used again, against different speakers, by different hands. The answer is concerted, coordinated, and entirely lawful civic action: petition, congressional oversight, litigation, journalism, public-records work, and the stubborn public exercise of the very speech this system sought to extinguish.

We do not ask Americans to accept our allegations without evidence.

We ask that the evidence be preserved, disclosed, and tested.

Our case has been dismissed. Our demand for a public accounting has not.