Filing in federal court today, Republican Michigan State Representative Matt Maddock alleges that the Democrat Speaker Joe Tate prohibits criticism by sitting legislators of Democrat policies and elected officials and asks the judiciary to render it unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
You can read the complaint here, and the request for an injunction here.
The case represents the governmental body of the legislature using its powers to silence its own conservative elected officials serving within it. The legislature, as evidenced in the complaint’s exhibits, were censoring whole pages of Maddock’s communications with citizens.
Some examples provided in the complaint about speech that is prohibited under the House Rules as enforced by Speaker Tate:
- Criticizing the legislature
- Criticizing fellow legislators
- Criticizing the Governor
- Anything deemed “partisan”
- Impugning motives of groups like lobbyists
The House under Democrat control even censored Maddock from repeating the truthful and popular phrase, “Taxation is theft.”
“This is an epic first amendment case,” says Maddock attorney Marc Randazza. “I have never seen a governmental body that was so flagrantly and so openly violating the spirit and letter of the first amendment. I cannot wait for the Michigan government to try and explain itself before a federal judge about why they should be entitled to censor legislators speaking to their own citizens.”
Maddock sent text for a digital newsletter to the civil servants who work for the Speaker in Lansing, Michigan’s capital. Those government employees, then, enforced a set of rules that said there could be no criticism of far-left Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and no allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, and could not talk about what they labelled as divisive issues.
Maddock in an exclusive statement to the Gateway Pundit, said: “The militant left in power across America is intent on destroying the first amendment so that they can destroy dissent,” he said. “They want to impose Marxist rule as a kind of religious theocracy where criticism of what they’re actually doing is banned. They’re already trying to expel conservatives from the legislature for their tweets, now maybe they’ll try to expel me for my dissent from their orthodoxy.”
Maddock was referencing a recent controversy from early February where Rep. Josh Schriver, a fellow conservative, was punished and censored for retweeting a Jack Posobiec post about accurate demographic trends which is labelled politically incorrect to notice. Democrat Speaker Tate condemned Schriver and fired Schriver’s staff and suspended all of his legislative privileges as a consequence for Schriver’s retweet that was falsely labelled as racist by left-wing pressure groups and left-wing corporate media.
Left-wing activists have been trying to get Rep. Schriver expelled from the legislature ever since. They have been trying to similarly expel Rep. Maddock from office with lawfare alleging that he is an insurrectionist, a case Maddock won easily. The militant left has used a combination of lawfare and organized defamation and smear campaigns to undermine their conservative enemies in the Wolverine State.
Maddock’s wife Meshawn is currently being prosecuted by far-left Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in her legal jihad against the 2020 Trump electors for having any doubts about the validity of that election, despite the ever-mounting evidence that it was far from the safest and most secure election in history.
The U.S. Supreme Court has roundly rejected what it describes as “prior restraint” where government officials are allowed to censor or prohibit a speaker from saying a potentially prohibited fact, topic, or statement.
In his censored newsletter, Rep. Maddock referenced the upcoming Supreme Court free speech case in which the Gateway Pundit’s Publisher is the lead plaintiff, which was also censored by the Michigan Legislature:
Separate but related to the government’s suppression of the first amendment, in one week the Supreme Court is set to hear the case of Murthy v. Missouri on appeal on March 18th, where Gateway Pundit Publisher Jim Hoft is the lead plaintiff. The case in the lower courts is styled differently, as Missouri v. Biden. Experts have said this is the Court’s free speech showdown of this generation.
This Michigan case is Maddock v. Michigan and is filed in the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division as case number 1:24-cv-00257. The parties in the case are Plaintiff Rep. Matthew Maddock (R), and Defendants: Michigan House of Representatives, Michigan House of Representatives Business Office, House censor Tabbatha Birmingham, Democrat Speaker Joe Tate, House Business Office Director Doug Simon, House Business Office Deputy Director Lisa Curtis, and Speaker Tate’s Press Secretary Amber McCann.
Speaker Tate’s receptionist Quentin said they would get right back to me when called for comment, and then their scheduler did not respond with any comment.
