Google Claims New SCOTUS Ruling Hurts PragerU’s Censorship Claim

[GURPS]

As The Daily Wire first reported back in 2017, PragerU filed a lawsuit against YouTube and Google, its parent company, for "unlawfully censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech." As James Barrett of The Daily Wire noted at the time:

This week PragerU, a conservative not-for-profit organization founded by Dennis Prager, filed a lawsuit against Google and YouTube for "unlawfully censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech." In an interview with The Daily Wire on Friday, PragerU CEO Marissa Streit underscored the far-reaching free speech implications of her organization's legal action against what has become "two of the most important public forums in the world" and explained why their legal team feels "very strongly" that they can win. ...

In a press release issued Tuesday, PragerU's legal team — which includes Harvard's Alan Dershowitz and former California Governor Pete Wilson and Eric George of Browne George Ross, among several others — laid out the rationale for the lawsuit, which was prompted by Google/YouTube restricting or "demonitizing" over 50 PragerU videos for what YouTube claims is "inappropriate" content for younger audiences.

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But now, Google is publicly boasting that the ruling in Manhattan Community Access Corp. undermines PragerU's legal claim. As Mediapost reports:

Google is now telling the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the [Manhattan Community Access Corp.] ruling protects companies like itself from lawsuits alleging "censorship."
"YouTube is a private service provider, not a state actor, and its editorial decisions are not subject to First Amendment scrutiny," Google writes in new court papers. ...
"When a private entity provides a forum for speech, the private entity is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment because the private entity is not a state actor," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority. "The private entity may thus exercise editorial discretion over the speech and speakers in the forum."
Google says the same logic applies to claims by the right-wing Prager University. The tech company writes that the ruling "affirmed that the 'Constitution does not disable private property owners and private lessees from exercising editorial discretion over speech and speakers on their property.'"

https://www.dailywire.com/news/48731/google-claims-new-scotus-ruling-hurts-pragerus-josh-hammer

 

[Bird Dog]

So, this must also mean that a business that doesn't want to do business with certain groups they are legally protected as they are not state "actors"