Judge sharply rejects Musk’s X lawsuit against nonprofit
A federal judge on Monday rejected Elon Musk’s lawsuit against an organization that accused the billionaire of promoting hate speech since his acquisition of Twitter, which he renamed X.
Musk claimed the Center for Countering Digital Hate had breached its contract by using Twitter postings to support its accusations, but U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco said Musk was actually trying to punish the group for exercising free speech.
“X Corp. has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp. — and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism,” Breyer wrote in a 52-page ruling dismissing the suit. He also said CCDH may be able to show that Musk was trying to suppress dissent, a finding that would require him to pay the organization’s legal fees.
After Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, he reinstated the accounts of former President Donald Trump and others who had been suspended for extreme statements in their postings. CCDH, which publishes articles on topics such as reproductive care, climate change and COVID-19 vaccinations, remained on X but said in February 2023 that hateful speech on the platform had soared since Musk’s restoration of accounts held by “neo-Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists and spreaders of dangerous conspiracy theories.”
Musk accused the organization of labeling anything with which it disagreed as hate speech, and said its allegations had cost him tens of millions of dollars in advertising. His lawsuit, filed in July, contended CCDH had violated the social media site’s ban on “scraping,” extracting content or data from the website and copying it for use elsewhere.
CCDH acknowledged it had used scraping tools to extract and reuse selected X postings, some with the help of Brandwatch, a company whose contract with Twitter and X gave it access to selected material. But the organization argued, and Breyer agreed, that Musk was trying to punish it not for any violations of its contract but for harming his reputation.
Noting that Musk had not sued CCDH for libel — which would have required him to prove that its statements were knowingly or recklessly false — the judge said, “X Corp. wishes to have it both ways — to be spared the burdens of pleading a defamation claim, while bemoaning the harm to its reputation, and seeking punishing damages based on reputational harm.”
Breyer also noted that CCDH had signed its Twitter contract and agreed to its restrictions in 2019. He said Musk had failed to allege that the organization could have known at the time that the platform “would abruptly change course to restore accounts that it had banned for spreading hate speech,” or that its reporting of public posts on X would allegedly cost Musk tens of millions of dollars.
“This is a fatal flaw” in the lawsuit, Breyer said. As late as January 2022, he recalled, “this Court was still fielding lawsuits from right-leaning users arguing that Twitter’s contentmoderation policies discriminated against them.”
Those lawsuits likewise were dismissed. But Breyer said the American Civil Liberties Union has reported that more than 100 research studies involving material from the platform have been delayed or canceled since Musk’s acquisition, and that more than half of the researchers said they acted in fear of being sued.
The ACLU and its allies filed arguments urging Breyer to dismiss the suit, and praised his ruling.
“This is an important decision that sees Elon Musk’s lawsuit for what it is — an effort to punish his critics for constitutionally protected speech and to deter researchers from studying his platform,” said Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
“Today’s decision proves that even the world’s wealthiest man cannot bend the rule of law to his will,” said Roberta Kaplan, the attorney for the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “We are living in an age of bullies, and it’s social media that gives them the power that they have today. It takes great courage to stand up to these bullies.”
A lawyer for X Corp. and Musk could not be reached for comment. They can appeal the ruling.