NewsGuard sues FTC alleging unconstitutional targeting and censorship

NewsGuard filed a federal lawsuit on February 6 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking a temporary restraining order and a permanent injunction to stop what it calls a year-long campaign by the Federal Trade Commission and Chairman Andrew Ferguson to punish and silence the company. The 52-page complaint, brought by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and led by counsel Robert Corn-Revere, accuses the agency of violating the First and Fourth Amendments.

The suit alleges the FTC used an antitrust-style investigation to extract extensive documents and imposed a merger condition in a proposed deal between Omnicom Group Inc. and The Interpublic Group of Companies Inc. that would bar the companies or their affiliates from contracting with NewsGuard or using its rating services. NewsGuard says the condition was drafted and amended last fall to ensure the ban would block access to its ratings and that the agency has sought to enforce broad demands for information through a civil subpoena described by the company as unjustified and overly burdensome.

NewsGuard’s co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz called the company “an apolitical news organization that provides consumers and businesses with information about the reliability of online news sources.” In a statement titled “Why We’ve Just Sued the Government,” they said the complaint “seeks a temporary restraining order and a permanent injunction forcing the FTC to abandon this blatantly unconstitutional targeting of NewsGuard.”

At the heart of the litigation are claims of viewpoint discrimination. The complaint contends that the FTC and Chairman Ferguson have targeted NewsGuard because the chairman “does not like NewsGuard’s news ratings, which he views as biased against conservative publications.” The filing frames the agency’s actions as punishment for NewsGuard’s journalistic judgments about source reliability, and it asks the court to declare both the information demand and the merger condition unconstitutional.

FIRE’s chief counsel Bob Corn-Revere urged the court to recognize NewsGuard’s work as protected speech, saying, “NewsGuard’s rating service is quintessential journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment,” and invoking the Supreme Court’s admonition that the government cannot decide “what counts as the right balance of private expression - to ‘un-bias’ what it thinks is biased.”

The complaint also quotes a public statement by Chairman Ferguson when the proposed consent order was released, which criticized NewsGuard for seeking “to use the chokepoint of the advertising industry to effect political or ideological goals” and accused the rating service of steering “advertising revenue with ‘an unavoidable partisan lens.’” NewsGuard’s filings frame that criticism as evidence of an improper motive.

NewsGuard and its lawyers seek declaratory relief affirming the constitutional limits on the FTC’s authority, and an order blocking any attempt to enforce the merger restriction or the agency’s documentary demands. The case also sits against recent friction between the FTC and other organizations: Media Matters for America previously sued over an FTC subpoena and obtained an injunction, a development NewsGuard cites for context.

The complaint names conservative outlets that receive low NewsGuard scores, including Newsmax and One America News, the latter noted in reporting as scoring 22.5 out of 100. The suit leaves open immediate questions for the court: whether the agency’s merger review process may include content-based restrictions and whether civil investigative tools can be wielded in ways the company calls retaliatory. The FTC and Chairman Ferguson did not provide a statement in the filings included with the complaint.