SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – Twitter is appealing a recent federal court decision that said it was too quick to sue the Texas attorney general over his reaction to President Donald Trump being banned from the social media platform.
Texas AG Ken Paxton’s response to Twitter banning Trump after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol was to issue a civil investigative demand to the company. Paxton sought documents relating to what he felt were possible violations of his state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act in regard to what it allows to be posted.
Twitter’s reply was to sue Paxton in California federal court in an attempt to stifle his CID.
“In each of the non-employment cases cited by Twitter, the potential consequences of the investigation were serious, for example, imposition of a substantial fine,” Judge Maxine Chesney recently wrote.
“Here, as Paxton points out, Twitter faces no such consequence. Unlike the defendants in the cases on which Twitter relies, (Paxton) has no authority to impose any sanction for a failure to comply with its investigation.
“Rather, (Paxton) would be required to go to court, where the only possible consequence adverse to Twitter would be a judicial finding that the CID, contrary to Twitter’s assertion, is enforceable.”
Because Paxton has not gone to court to enforce the CID, Twitter’s lawsuit was premature, Chesney wrote. The company filed its notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on May 14.
Twitter’s lawsuit also focuses on Paxton urging the Federal Communications Commission to construe a provision of federal law after Twitter censored tweets from Trump.
According to the lawsuit, Paxton has a long history of complaints with Twitter and other social media/big tech companies, including accusing them of censoring or stifling conservative voices and opinions on the platform and internet.
Paxton complained on Fox News about Twitter censoring false or misleading content regarding election and voting practices in May of last year, and called the platform "politically biased," the suit says.
In September 2020, Paxton filed a comment with the Federal Communications Commission urging the FCC to construe a provision of federal law after Twitter continued to censor false and misleading tweets from former president Donald Trump, the suit says.
Twitter says that Trump's inappropriate tweets increased in frequency after the November 2020 election, until he spoke to a crowd in January of this year where he continued to insist the election was stolen, and encouraged the crowd to march to the Capitol Building, to "fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
After Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter, Paxton tweeted that he would "fight [Twitter] with all he's got."
Paxton then filed a civil investigative demand to see Twitter's content moderation policies, despite Twitter having a First Amendment right to its highly confidential internal documents, the suit claimed.