## US Government Settles With Former NYT Reporter Alex Berenson Over Alleged First Amendment Violations in Twitter Censorship Case
The U.S. government has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who was permanently suspended from Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic for posts questioning vaccine efficacy. The settlement, dated May 11 and obtained by The Epoch Times, marks a rare government admission that federal officials may have violated constitutional protections by pressuring social media platforms to suppress certain speech.

Berenson filed the case in 2023 against then-President Joe Biden, Dr. Scott Gottlieb—a Pfizer board member—and other officials. The complaint alleged coordinated government efforts to silence dissenting views on vaccines and pandemic policy. In the settlement agreement, government officials acknowledged that the administration "did in fact violate the First Amendment by exerting substantial coercive pressure on social media companies such as Twitter to suppress disfavored speech." Berenson agreed to dismiss the case in exchange for the settlement payment.

The case drew attention to the broader debate over federal agencies' role in content moderation decisions during the pandemic. Critics have long argued that government officials crossed legal lines by encouraging platforms to remove or restrict material deemed inconvenient to official narratives. Berenson, who had built a following with skeptical coverage of COVID restrictions, became a focal point for those questioning the boundaries between public health guidance and censorship. The settlement arrives amid ongoing legal challenges from multiple parties alleging similar government coercion of social media companies during the same period.
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- **Source**: ZeroHedge
- **Sector**: The Network
- **Tags**: first-amendment, twitter-censorship, government-pressure, social-media-moderation, covid-speech-restrictions
- **Credibility**: unverified
- **Published**: 2026-05-14 15:18:28
- **ID**: 83062
- **URL**: https://whisperx.ai/en/intel/83062