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Date: 05-07-2022
Case Style:
Case Number: 3:21-cv-08378-JD
Judge: James Donato
Court: United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Francisco County)
Plaintiff's Attorney: John P. Coale, Andrei Dan Popovici, Frank C. Dudenhefer, John Kelly, Mark L. Fiala, Michael J. Jones, Richard Polk Lawson, Ronald A. Paul, Ryan Tougias and Sean M. Hamill
Defendant's Attorney: Peter W. Homer, Ari Holtzblatt, Felicia Ellsworth, Patrick J. Carome, and Thomas G. Sprankling
Description: San Francisco, California civil litigation lawyers represented Plaintiffs, who sued Defendants claiming that they violated the Federal Communications Act of 1934 by kicking President Donald J. Trump off of Twitter in January 2021.
Twitter permanently suspended Tump for breaking it's rules against “glorification of violence” with tweets widely seen as fanning the flames just after the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Trump was joined in the suit by the American Conservative Union and five individual users including anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists Naomi Wolf and Wayne Allyn Root.
The Plaintiffs claimed that Defendants' conduct violated the First Amendment right to free speech.
Outcome: Motion for summary judgment sustain. The First Amendment “applies only to governmental abridgements of speech, and not to alleged abridgements by private companies,” the order explains, noting that Twitter “is a private company.” An amended complaint filed by Trump “merely offers a grab-bag of allegations to the effect that some Democratic members of Congress wanted Mr. Trump, and ‘the views he espoused,’ to be banned from Twitter,” the order continues, “because such ‘content and views’ were ‘contrary to those legislators’ preferred points of view.’”
Plaintiff's Experts:
Defendant's Experts:
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