Pro-life group accuses YouTube, Pinterest of 'illegal and discriminatory action' in legal documents

The pro-life group Live Action has had its share of showdowns with Silicon Valley censorship, and now it's taken legal action against two tech companies it says are suppressing its message.

In a Thursday blog post, the group said that it had sent out "cease and desist" legal demand letters to Pinterest and YouTube, alleging that the companies had engaged in breach of contract, among other claims.

"Live Action is charging that YouTube and Pinterest have violated the law by engaging in illegal and discriminatory action against the organization based on its pro-life ideology and mission," the post says. It adds the organization has "made it abundantly clear that it is looking at all options to highlight and expose the discriminatory and speech suppression activities of both tech companies."

Earlier this year, Pinterest added the advocacy organization's account to a block list, falsely labeling it "pornography."  The platform later permanently banned the group over what it said was "harmful misinformation."

As for YouTube, Live Action says that the company has failed to run ads put forward by the group, despite their claims that they've already paid for them and gotten them approved.

“When reviewing the evidence in both of these cases, it is quite clear that YouTube and Pinterest have engaged in discriminatory and speech-suppressing actions that have led to monetary and reputational damages to our organization," Live Action founder and president Lila Rose said in Thursday's post. "We have played by the rules outlined by these enterprises, paid our bills and lived up to the terms of service agreements, yet they still choose to discriminate against us because we are a pro-life advocacy organization.”

The organization has retained the services of famed attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who also represented several of the Covington Catholic High School students in the wake of this year's March for Life incident as well as journalist Andy Ngo after he was allegedly assaulted by Antifa members earlier this year.

Dhillon's firm sent out the cease-and-desist letters on August 21, giving the companies until the end of the month to address the situation. Both letters allege breach of contract and violation of California law.

“YouTube and Pinterest are clearly in violation of the law and must remedy this situation," Dhillon said. "The evidence in both of these cases is substantial, ranging from suppression of speech and breach of contract to censorship and banning of Live Action based on false claims.”

Neither Pinterest or YouTube responded immediately to Blaze Media's request for comment.

Update: CR received the following statement from a YouTube spokesperson after this article was originally published:

"We’ve been very public that for a wide range of news and information queries, we have algorithms that are designed to surface authoritative content of all viewpoints, including pro-choice and pro-life videos. This means we bring authoritative content to the top of our search results for abortion-related queries, among many other health and news-related topics. Our search results and ads policies function the same regardless of whether there are pro-choice or pro-life viewpoints involved."

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px}
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */