Media watchdog NewsGuard filed a lawsuit on Friday against the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly violating the news rating group's First Amendment rights.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed the complaint on behalf of NewsGuard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming that the FTC "unconstitutionally used its broad regulatory powers" against the watchdog "because it doesn't like its news ratings."

The lawsuit alleges that FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and the agency itself "engaged in unconstitutional retaliation against NewsGuard based on its perceived viewpoints"; "violated the First and Fourth Amendments by an unjustified and overly burdensome civil investigation into the company's operations"; and "unconstitutionally targeted NewsGuard for its First Amendment activity, including by conditioning a merger last fall between advertising companies Omnicom and IPG on a prohibition against the new conglomerate using news rating services when determining where to buy ads — drafted and amended to ensure the ban would prohibit access to NewsGuard’s ratings."

The complaint requests an injunction to end the FTC’s civil investigation into NewsGuard’s practices and to stop the government from enforcing the condition of the Omnicom merger.

In May, the FTC launched an investigation of NewsGuard, allegedly ordering the group to hand over the names of all its clients, virtually every document and communication it has produced related to news ratings, and all financial reports since its founding in 2018, according to the lawsuit, The Washington Post reported.

Also last year, before approving a $13 billion merger for Omnicom that created the world’s largest ad agency, the FTC included an order that effectively blocks the company from doing business with groups like NewsGuard, according ot the watchdog.

The FTC did not immediately respond to the Post's request for comment.

“NewsGuard’s rating service is quintessential journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has unanimously affirmed that the government has no legitimate role in saying what counts as the right balance of private expression — to ‘un-bias’ what it thinks is biased,” FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere said in a statement.

“Disagreement over news coverage is precisely the kind of expression the First Amendment protects. If the government, regardless of the party in charge, can use its levers of power to punish an organization over its coverage, there’s no reason it can’t do the same to pursue other news organizations that it disfavors.”