(CP) – A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has unanimously ruled that YouTube can censor conservative content, as it is not compelled by the First Amendment to allow all viewpoints. The popular conservative YouTube channel PragerU filed a lawsuit against YouTube and Google, accusing the entities of wrongfully censoring their videos.
However, in a decision released Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit panel affirmed a lower court ruling dismissing Prager’s lawsuit against the video-sharing website. Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown authored the panel’s opinion, arguing that despite its large-scale use and viewership, YouTube remains a private forum rather than a public forum.
“Despite YouTube’s ubiquity and its role as a public facing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment,” wrote McKeown. “PragerU runs headfirst into two insurmountable barriers—the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent. Just last year, the Court held that ‘merely hosting speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public function and does not alone transform private entities into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints.’” FULL REPORT
