2-24-2022
Trump’s bid to get back on Twitter is 'on thin ice'
after judge cites 'mountain of law' against him.
Donald Trump's bid to get back on Twitter suffered an apparent setback in court on Thursday, with a federal judge questioning how the former president is going to get around a "mountain of law" against him.
"U.S. District Judge James Donato told a lawyer representing the former president that while technology and law might change and evolve, 'one thing that's been more or less a constant going back 20 years is that private companies like Twitter are not subject to the First Amendment,'" Courthouse News reports.
Judge Donato made the statement Thursday during
a hearing in San Francisco on Twitter's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Trump last year, seeking
the reinstatement of his account. According to Courthouse News, Donato signaled "a strong inclination" to rule in favor of Twitter's motion.
“You've got a mountain of law saying ‘no' to your
First Amendment claim. It’s not clear to me how
you are traversing that,” Donato told Trump attorney Marie Fiala.
Trump's attorneys have argued that Twitter acted
in concert with Democratic lawmakers to ban him, thereby making the company a "state actor."
But Donato rejected that claim.
“It's perfectly fine for a politician to express dissatisfaction with conduct. I'm not looking for
what a Democrat said at a committee hearing
but an actual threat,” Donato said.
“We're talking express threats of government prosecution, some kind of criminal sanction, a taking."
He added that as alleged by Trump, "the threat factor seems pretty low."
“I read, reread and read again your complaint and
I’m not seeing any coercive statements by state actors and that is the hook you are hanging your
hat on,” Donato said, according to a report on the hearing from Bloomberg.
Fiala, Trump's attorney, reportedly offered to amend her complaint to address the judge's concerns, but a lawyer representing Twitter, Patrick Carome, argued she should not be allowed to do so.
"The allegations are extremely paltry,” Carome
told Donato. “Jawboning and haranguing individual legislators — which is what elected officials do —
is not the stuff of coercive state action. ...
They’ve amended already once. If there was something here to show that Twitter was coerced — that it was not Twitter's decision —
they'd have found it.”
According to Bloomberg, "Donato said he would
issue a ruling on Twitter’s request to dismiss the
suit without specifying a time frame."
"Trump’s Twitter-like social-media platform --
'Truth Social' -- debuted Feb. 21 with a glitchy start.
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