On Thursday, March 7th, we filed Stockton v. Ferguson in the Eastern District of Washington. Washington has prosecuted around 60 doctors, in whole or in part based of their speaking out in public against the mainstream Covid narrative. Since April 2023, I have been involved in one of these prosecutions, the one against Richard Eggleston. We had obtained a appellate court stay of the case, but it was recently vacated. So it was time to up the ante and change thing up. Dr. Eggleston and two other doctors are plaintiffs in the case. One of them, Thomas Siler is also being prosecuted. Dan Moynihan is not being prosecution, but his speech is being chilled because of all of these prosecutions. CHD (and its Washington chapter) is also a plaintiff. We also listed John and Jane Does 1-50, because we do not currently have the names of the other doctors being prosecuted, but we hope to get that information by court order.

This case is somewhat different from the four prior Covid misinformation I have worked on, as reflected by the first named plaintiff, John Stockton. To me and millions of other people, John represents the values which most Americans cherish and share, hard work, focus, and getting the job done without a lot of fanfare (but because of John’s superabundance of these qualities, the fanfare and accolades were hard to avoid, but were well-deserved). We (RFK Jr. Todd Richardson and I) file this new case with pride and excitement.

The courts have recognized that flip-side of the right to speak is the right of the public to hear the speaker. It seems like a crazy but understandable idea to try to silence people with scientific and health care backgrounds during a pandemic. Crazy, because in a novel health crises, society should want a vigorous public debate when highly personal infringing rules are in place like forced vaccination, forced masking and lockdowns. Understandable, because what the last four years has taught us is that the government, the professional health organizations and pharma controlled media have manipulated the messaging delivered to the public, and keep it from asking too many questions, like why are all these otherwise completely healthy not old people dropping dead.

But what the last four years have also taught us is that people will fight back and challenge these restrictions on actions and speech. Some challenges have failed, some have succeeded. The important thing is that we keep challenging the government repressive actions.

The now five legal challenges I have brought (McKenzie v. Lawson, Hoang v Bonta, Eggleston v. Washington Medical Commission, Kory v. Bonta and now Stockton v. Ferguson), (three of which RFK Jr is co-counsel) are just one small battlefield in anti-censorship theater of operations.

A larger battle will be playing out in the Supreme Court on the 18th, Biden (now Murthy) v Missouri (and Kennedy v. Biden which recently obtain a preliminary injunction). Fun and now mostly forgotten fact. RFK Jr filed the first health related censorship case against Facebook years ago. He also went after the social media’s truth police in the trusted news case. And not surprisingly, he is with me on all three of my recently filed federal censorship cases. He is more obsessed with this stuff than even me.

In case you are getting confused about all these theaters, let me try to explain it simply.

As you all know, the First Amendment only protects people from government action, not the action of private individuals or companies.

So, First Amendment cases have to name a government agency (like my cases against the state medical boards), or the federal government, and make a direct censorship claim or claim that the feds are pressuring private companies into censoring people, like the Missouri and Kennedy v. Biden cases.

Or, you have to allege that the private companies are state actors and hence have to comply with the First Amendment, and that would be RFK Jr’s Facebook case.

Or, some other legal theory of liability, like antitrust or conspiracy, and that would include RFK Jr’s Trusted Initiative case against the fact checking conglomerate enterprise.

And that is the legal landscape of the First Amendment theater of operations as I see it.

Circling back to my little theater of operations, here is the Stockton lawsuit we just filed. filestampedcomplaint. I expect to get into court by mid May.

Rick Jaffe, Esq.