In October 2017, conservative pundit Dennis Prager filed a federal lawsuit against YouTube and its parent company for placing dozens (currently more than 200) of PragerU's videos in "restricted mode," meaning they are inaccessible from accounts that employed parental controls to shield children from violent, sexual, or otherwise-inappropriate content. He contends that the videos contained no sex, nudity, foul language, or graphic violence, and were being restricted in violation of YouTube's Terms of Use.

That suit was tossed last year, leading PragerU to appeal to the Ninth Circuit, arguing first that YouTube officials' own claims to be a "public forum" make it subject to Ninth Circuit precedent that identifies such a forum's speech regulation as "state action" subject to First Amendment scrutiny; and second that Google's censorship practices render its stated claims to respect "freedom of expression" and practice "neutrality" misrepresentations under the federal Lanham Act, which covers claims of false or misleading advertising.