Trump’s Twitter Lawsuit Thrown Out
An Obama-appointed federal judge in San Francisco, CA has thrown out president Trump’s Twitter Lawsuit according to an article from the New York Post. Twitter had banned the president following the events of Jan. 6, 2020 which prompted Trump to file suit against the platform as well as YouTube and Facebook who also kicked him off their platforms. The latter lawsuits are still ongoing.
Similar Lawsuit Against Twitter Allowed To Proceed
The decision of an Obama-appointed federal judge in San Francisco to throw out Trump’s case may not be too surprising. However, this decision does seem a bit biased given that a similar lawsuit against Twitter for banning journalist Alex Berenson was recently given the greenlight to proceed to discovery. It should be noted that in the Berenson lawsuit, the issue of whether Twitter had violated Berenson’s freedom of speech was not upheld, because “the free speech clause only prohibits government abridgement of speech – plaintiff concedes Twitter is a private company.”
The case was, however allowed to proceed on the grounds that Twitter may not have applied its own “COVID-19 misinformation policy” appropriately. As such, the case will proceed to discovery and Twitter will have to produce all communications pertaining to the decision to ban Berenson’s account.
No Word On Whether Trump’s Twitter Lawsuit Will Be Appealed
In the case of Trump’s Twitter lawsuit, it was not clear whether or not the case would be appealed. It would be interesting to see if upon appeal, the case would be allowed to progress on grounds of restriction of Freedom of Speech, or whether, like Berenson’s case, it would have to proceed on grounds of misapplication of policies. The New York Post article raised the question as to whether this lawsuit would be rendered moot due to the ongoing acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. However, the decision to ban president Trump predated any acquisition talks and the acquisition is still not complete.
