Nationalist gets OK to sue Twitter

A San Francisco judge has refused to throw out a lawsuit that accuses Twitter of violating the free speech rights of a leading white nationalist by banning his social media account.

Superior Court Judge Harold Khan ruled in Jared Taylor’s favor during a hearing Thursday on Twitter’s request to dismiss the suit, court records show.

Taylor claims Twitter permanently suspended accounts belonging to him and hundreds of other far-right users based solely on their political views and affiliations.

Khan described Taylor’s case as a “classic public interest lawsuit” and said it “goes to the heart of free speech principles that long precede our Constitution,” according to a transcript of the hearing.

“Now, it may be speech that you and I don’t wish to enjoy, but that’s not germane to the determination of whether it’s public interest. Public interest doesn’t have a flavor of ideology to it; public interest is whether it benefits the public,” Khan said.

Company attorney Patrick Carome argued that services like Twitter have a First Amendment editorial right to choose what kind of content to distribute.

“And a bookstore, or a newspaper editor, or a cable platform has a First Amendment right to make good, bad, horrible decisions about who and who does not get to speak on its platform and what content does and does not get to be on its platform,” he said.

A Twitter spokeswoman declined Friday to comment on the decision.