Appeals Court: No, You Can’t Just Sue Twitter Because You’re Upset They Kicked Trump Off

Content Moderation

from the not-how-any-of-this-works dept

We’ve covered on here former President Donald Trump’s ridiculous lawsuit against Twitter for kicking him off the platform for violating its terms of service (a lawsuit that is not going well at all), but I had missed that some random person, Maria Rutenberg, had also sued Twitter for the same thing. No, not for kicking her off, but for kicking Trump off. She claimed (I am not joking) that it violated her 1st Amendment rights not to be able to respond to his tweets. I only wish I were joking. From the complaint:

This case is not about the free speech of Former President Trump – this case is about the free speech rights of Plaintiff Maria Rutenburg and millions of people around the country who have a First Amendment right to view, discuss, debate, comment, reply and respond to Former President Trump’s tweets.

As you might imagine, that case has also gone poorly. The district court quickly denied a request for a Temporary Restraining Order against Twitter (to force it to reinstate Trump), it then easily dismissed the case, pointing out that Twitter is not a state actor, and therefore could not violate her 1st Amendment rights.

In sum, Rutenburg has failed to demonstrate that Twitter is a state actor sufficient to trigger liability for an alleged deprivation of federal rights under Section 1983. Rutenburg conflates decisions finding that former President Trump’s usage of Twitter is a public forum, constraining his ability to summarily block critics, and impermissibly attempts to extend this underlying logic to Twitter. This fails where Twitter is not a state actor, and is not exercising any sovereign state authority. Rutenburg’s citations do not persuade, where such cases concern state actors, including elected state or local officials. Rutenburg otherwise fails to cite to a single case where a Court has found a private non-state actor liable under Section 1983 for alleged violations of constitutional rights in similar circumstances.

Undeterred by basic common sense, Rutenberg appealed the case to the 9th Circuit, where… it was also easily rejected because, once again (this time, with feeling), Twitter is not a state actor and cannot take away anyone’s 1st Amendment rights.

The district court properly dismissed Rutenburg’s First Amendment claim: She did not allege sufficient facts to infer that the defendants (collectively, “Twitter” or “the company”) engaged in state action when the company moderated or suspended the former President’s Twitter account. The First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause “prohibits the government—not a private party—from abridging speech.” Prager Univ. v. Google LLC, 951 F.3d 991, 996 (9th Cir. 2020) (citations omitted). Dismissal was proper because the complaint lacked “a cognizable legal theory” or “sufficient well-pleaded, nonconclusory factual allegation[s]” to state a plausible claim for relief. Beckington v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 926 F.3d 595, 604 (9th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)

So, just to make it abundantly clear: we already knew that people who, themselves, have been removed from a private social media platform cannot get a court to reinstate them by claiming their 1st Amendment rights have been violated, but now we can also note, with pretty clear certainty, that you also can’t claim that a social media platform removing someone else (even someone you really, really like) violates your 1st Amendment rights.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, content moderation, donald trump, maria rutenberg, state action, state action doctrine
Companies: twitter