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Conservative activist and children’s safety campaigner “Billboard Chris” took a victory lap Wednesday after successfully suing part of the Australian government for trying to censor his posts critical of government officials that advocate for transgender operations.
Following a lawsuit filed by social media platform X and the conservative activist – whose real name is Chris Elston – the Australian government was forced to back down from its demands that X delete Elston’s 2024 post criticizing a World Health Organization bureaucrat for what Elston described as their pro-child gender operation views.
“I think this was a very large dose of rationality for Australia, which has really gone off the deep end in terms of censorship,” Elston told Fox News Digital following an Australian Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) ruling this week that Elston could leave his post on the platform.
Elston added that the ruling was “a decisive victory” and declared that “Australians should rejoice because they’re free to call a man a man, and a woman a woman.”
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‘Billboard Chris’ Elston won a legal battle with the Australian government after bureaucrats demanded he take down a social media post criticizing an Australian transgender World Health Organization employee. (MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images / Contributor)
X’s official Global Government Affairs account reacted to the verdict, stating, “This is a decisive win for free speech in Australia and around the world. X will continue to fight against coercive state censorship and to defend our users’ rights to free speech.”
Elston shared a Daily Mail story on X in 2024 that exposed the identity and sexual proclivities of Teddy Cook, an Australian transgender male who had just been appointed to a WHO body tasked with drafting “care guidelines for trans and non-binary people.”
The Daily Mail reported that Cook has a “kinky track record in everything from bestiality to bondage, drugs and nudism.” Elston posted the article to X and referred to Cook as a “she,” in accordance with Cook’s biological sex.
In the caption to his original post, Elston wrote, “This woman (yes, she’s female) is part of a panel of 20 ‘experts’ hired by the @WHO to draft their policy on caring for ‘trans people.’ People who belong in psychiatric wards are writing the guidelines for people who belong in psychiatric wards.”
‘Billboard Chris’ is an international activist known for wearing a sandwich board that says “children cannot consent to puberty blockers.” (Photo provided by ADF International)
After his posts, Elston revealed that Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant sent the activist and X a notice demanding they remove the posts because it amounted to “cyber abuse” of Cook. The government official then threatened X with a nearly $800,000 fine if the platform did not remove the post, prompting X and Elston’s legal challenge.
Lois McLatchie Miller, a spokesperson for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International – the legal group who coordinated Elston’s case against the ruling along with Australia’s Human Rights Law Alliance – explained to Fox News Digital how Grant tried to justify the demand to have Elston’s speech removed from social media.
According to the legal expert, Grant charged Elston and X with violating Australia’s “Online Safety Act,” alleging his post engaged in “cyber abuse against an Australian adult.”
Miller continued, “So they use that terminology to say that Chris’s post should have been banned. But of course, that would give rise to or demand that Chris intended or the intention of his tweet was to bully someone to abuse them. And, of course, that was not the case.”
After a week-long hearing over Elston’s case that occurred in March, ART reached a verdict Wednesday siding with the activist. According to ART Deputy President Damien O’Donovan, it was clear that Elston’s post was not cyber abuse but a statement of his beliefs.
Donovan stated in his ruling, “The post, although phrased offensively, is consistent with views Mr Elston has expressed elsewhere in circumstances where the expression of the view had no malicious intent.”
“When the evidence is considered as a whole I am not satisfied that an ordinary reasonable person would conclude that by making the post Mr Elston intended to cause Mr Cook serious harm,” he added.
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Miller described Donovan’s finding as a “really significant point,” telling Fox News Digital that Elston’s “intention was to keep his conviction to speak in the way that he thought was accurate and true. And to uphold the right of identity of women and children.”
Elston mentioned he felt his team beat the case on “every single legal point.”
“I think this sets a fantastic precedent going forward, and it should, at the very least, make Australians feel safe to say that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, because we’ve set a precedent for that,” he said.
Miller added, “This is a really significant early ruling in favor of free speech, which is going to be helpful for citizens all over the world as they tackle these new laws coming in.”
In a press release, ADF International executive director Paul Coleman celebrated the verdict.
“This is a decisive win for free speech and sets an important precedent in the growing global debate over online censorship. In this case, the Australian government alarmingly censored the peaceful expression of a Canadian citizen on an American-owned platform, evidence of the expansive reach of censorial forces, even beyond national borders. Today, free speech has prevailed.”
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The Australian eSafety Commission pointed Fox News Digital to their statement on ART’s verdict, which read, “eSafety welcomes the guidance provided by the Tribunal on the statutory test for adult cyber abuse. We will continue to take seriously the responsibility of remediating online harms and protecting Australians from serious online harms.”
