Candace Owens, a top conservative influencer, loses an advertising contract due to “Covid hoax posts,” and the Supreme Court dismisses her petition without answering her questions on Monday.
The Supreme Court of the United States dismissed Candace Owens’ petition about fact-checks that deemed her COVID-19 Facebook posts to be “false” and “a hoax” in another high-profile denial of certiorari on Monday without any comments.
Fact checkers Lead Stories and USA Today labeled Candace Owen’s Covid Facebook posts as “false” and “a hoax,” and she claimed it constituted tortious interference. The conservative commentator and influencer claimed that because Facebook is her “main marketplace,” her income was “severely damaged” as a result of that.
Owens asked the Supreme Court for help in May after the Delaware courts refused to intervene because they were not convinced.
“Lead Stories and USA Today both decided to publish articles that purported to ‘fact-check’ Owens’ claims rather than publish editorials to counter her speech. No mere rhetorical ploy, both Lead Stories and USA Today knew that naming their articles ‘Fact Checks’ would trigger their contractual agreement with Facebook.”
“The agreement mandates that Facebook will take down or otherwise obscure or limit any posts that its contractees, acting in accordance with its fact-check contract, determine to be ‘false,'” according to the petition.
“Owens’ research and findings on the Covid counting methods were deemed to be “false,” by Lead Stories and USA Today. Lead Stories issued a “Hoax Alert” after describing her posts as a hoax.
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The Effect of the ‘FALSE’ Label on Candace Owens’ Facebook Posts and her advertising contract with Facebook
The petitioner said that the ensuing “warning labels superimposed the term ‘False’ across the top of her posts caused Owens’ valuable advertising contract with Facebook to be terminated. This prevented Owens from placing her advertisements across thousands of Facebook pages and severely damaged her income.”
According to Owens, the fact-check’s conclusion that she had “committed a ‘hoax’ involving the threat and danger of a worldwide pandemic” was “an extremely egregious charge.” Because this implies that Owens purposefully withheld information about how deadly the disease is from the public, as a result, putting the health and lives of the thousands of visitors to her Facebook page at risk.”
But the Supreme Court on Monday refused to respond to any of the raised questions and dismissed the case.