The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit by Twitter accusing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of retaliating for the social media giant's ban of former President Donald Trump.
The procedural ruling Wednesday allows the continuation of an investigation by Texas into Twitter's expulsion of Trump last year, the Washington Times reported.
Twitter sued in response to Paxton's issuance of a civil investigative demand for information about Twitter's content moderation policies.
The Big Tech company contends Paxton's demand amounts to government retaliation for speech protected by the First Amendment.
A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit said Wednesday that Twitter's case was not ready for a judicial decision, affirming a lower court's to dismiss the case. The lower court noted Paxton had not yet made an allegation against Twitter.
One year ago, Paxton warned in a Zoom conference call organized by the Media Research Center and attended by WND that unless states immediately began addressing Big Tech censorship, "we may lose our opportunity to address some of the wrongs that are occurring."
Paxton said that as soon as he was re-elected, his office began researching the issue, consulting with scholars, experts and attorneys with anti-trust experience. He concluded Texas needed to begin with a case against Google for monopolistic behavior.
He said Google's near "absolute" control of advertising – representing the buyers, sellers and the exchange – is like a baseball game in which the pitcher, catcher, batter and umpire are all playing for the same team.
In the 9th Circuit opinion Wednesday, Judge Ryan D. Nelson wrote that while Twitter "could suffer hardship from withholding court consideration, adjudicating this case now would require determining whether Twitter has violated Texas’s unfair trade practices law before [Texas’ attorney general] has a chance to complete its investigation."
"Any hardship to Twitter from the alleged chill of its First Amendment rights was insufficient to overcome the uncertainty of the legal issue presented in the case in its current posture," Nelson wrote.
The Times pointed out that the judges’ ruling against Twitter does not mean Paxton has won the case or that his investigation will force Twitter to restore Trump's access.
The court said that determining whether or not content moderation is protected speech or political censorship is at the center of the case. It ruled that misrepresentations about content moderation policies are not constitutionally protected speech.
Paxton’s office did not comment on the lawsuit’s outcome on Wednesday.
A Twitter spokesman said the company believes the Texas Attorney General "is misusing the powers of his office to infringe on Twitter‘s fundamental rights in an attempt to silence free speech."
Paxton began investigating Twitter and four other Big Tech companies after it permanently banned the account of President Trump and other conservatives after the the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Paxton charged the companies were engaged in "the seemingly coordinated de-platforming of the President."
Twitter said in its lawsuit that Paxton "made clear that he will use the full weight of his office, including his expansive investigatory powers, to retaliate against Twitter for having made editorial decisions with which he disagrees."
Paxton led a lawsuit that challenged the 2020 election results in six states based on evidence of fraud and irregularities. Attorneys general from 17 other states joined in the complaint, which was rejected by the Supreme Court. The high court reasoned that fraud in an election in one state would not impact the results of the election in another state.
via wnd