It has already been shown through exposés, litigation, and uncovered documents that President Joe Biden's administration has unlawfully engaged in unconstitutional censorship of American citizens on social media who express viewpoints that the government disagrees with.

Now a new lawsuit has been filed that accuses the Biden State Department of funding and supporting "censorship enterprises" that target conservative-leaning media outlets, according to Breitbart.

The complaint was filed Wednesday by the state of Texas in conjunction with a legal group known as the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is representing plaintiff conservative media outlets The Daily Wire and The Federalist against a State Department entity known as the Global Engagement Center, which is supposed to be focused solely on potential foreign threats.

Clear violation of the First Amendment

The 67-page filing in a Texas federal court called for declaratory and injunctive relief to halt what it described as "one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation."

The suit asserted that the State Department's GEC "is actively intervening in the news-media market to render disfavored press outlets unprofitable by funding the infrastructure, development, and marketing and promotion of censorship technology and private censorship enterprises to covertly suppress speech of a segment of the American press."

Such action has been taken despite the GEC having "been granted no statutory authority to fund or promote censorship technology or censorship enterprises that target the American press, tarring disfavored domestic news organizations as purveyors of 'disinformation,'" not to mention the fact that the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment "expressly forbids" such censorious conduct by the government.

Suit names Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard as government-backed censors

While the "full breadth of Defendant GEC’s censorship scheme is currently unknown," the plaintiffs specifically named the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard as being "funded, promoted, and/or marketed" by GEC.

Furthermore, the lawsuit stated, "These entities generate blacklists of ostensibly risky or unreliable American news outlets for the purpose of discrediting and demonetizing the disfavored press and redirecting money and audiences to news organizations that publish favored viewpoints."

Such actions have harmed the plaintiff media outlets by "starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and
speech," while the state of Texas claimed harm in that it "undermines Texas law" that "requires social media companies with market power to act as common carriers" and, as such, "interferes with the State of Texas’s sovereign interest in creating and enforcing a legal code."

Plaintiffs speak out against government censorship

"I am proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government," Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a press release on Wednesday to announce the new lawsuit. "The State Department’s mission to obliterate the First Amendment is completely un-American. This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with."

The NCLA likewise announced on Wednesday the lawsuit that names as defendants the State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Global Engagement Center, and five other top officials in the GEC.

Mark Chenoweth, NCLA's president and general counsel, said in a statement, "The federal government cannot do indirectly what the First Amendment forbids it from doing directly. The chilling censorship machinations alleged in this complaint will frighten all liberty-loving Americans to the core."

"The government is engaged in an ongoing illegal effort -- funded by our taxpayer dollars -- to destroy our business and our First Amendment rights because of our politics," Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, said. "The days of conservatives sitting back and doing nothing while a corrupt censorship-industrial complex actively bulldozes the First Amendment are over. We will not stop until this entire corrupt edifice has been torn down, brick by brick, and every single person involved has been held accountable."

The Daily Wire said in a statement, "The Biden administration is illegally funding organizations with the stated goal of financially crippling media outlets whose coverage does not walk in lockstep with the government’s ideological agenda. We sued the Biden administration before over its unconstitutional vaccine mandate, and we won. This time, we’re suing for our rights, all news organizations’ rights, and the constitutional guarantee of a free press that all Americans deserve."