Anti-Biden Twitter critic loses federal civil rights suit alleging conspiracy to close his account

The plaintiff here was an active Twitter-poster who criticized President Biden's COVID-19 policies, challenging the shutdowns and school closures. Twitter eventually suspended him under its five-strikes-yer-out rule after determining he was tweeting misinformation about the virus. This lawsuit against the former FDA commissioner and Pfizer executives alleges that the suspension violated a federal civil rights conspiracy law. Plaintiff loses.

The case is Berenson v. Gottlieb, a summary order issued on October 20. Plaintiff says that Twitter shut him down after gaining over 200,000 followers in conspiracy with the Biden administration. Federal law does prohibit conspiracies to violate civil rights. That statute is 42 U.S.C. section 1985(3). But 1985(3) has significant limitations. It only applies when the conspiracy would violate your rights in a protected class under the Equal Protection Clause, such as a racial or class-based discriminatory motivation. Also, religious and gender discrimination. The Supreme Court has also Section 1985 might not protect political groups unless that discrimination was racially motivated. The Court of Appeals seems to protect plaintiffs who suffer conspiracies due to their political party affiliation but not because they are political opponents of the defendants.

Plaintiff loses because he asserts in the complaint that he is a Biden opponent and critic, not that he is suffering discrimination due to his political party. Also, the Second Circuit (Leval, Wesley and Bianco) holds,  he does not belong to a protected class under Section 1985(3). He belongs to a political class, not a racial, gender, or religious class. While he argues that he does belong to a racial or religious class because a disproportionate number of evangelical Christians and African-Americans support him, along with political conservatives, the Second Circuit rejects this argument as an effort to incorporate a disparate impact angle to the framework, which the Second Circuit denied in Reynolds v. Barrett, 685 F.3d 193 (2d Cir. 2012).