Former President Donald Trump
Tom Brenner Reuters
A judge on Friday rejected a lawsuit filed by former President Donald Trump seeking to lift his Twitter ban.
But San Francisco Federal District Court Judge James Donato left the door open for Trump and other plaintiffs to file an amended complaint against Twitter, in line with his decision to dismiss the case in its entirety on Friday.
The social media giant banned Trump on January 8, 2021, citing the risk of inciting further violence following the Capitol uprising by a crowd of supporters of the then president two days earlier.
Trump, the American Conservative Union and five others sued Twitter and its co-founder Jack Dorsey last year on their behalf and a class of other Twitter users who were loaded from the app.
The lawsuit alleges that Twitter violated the rights of plaintiffs in the First Amendment to freedom of speech, alleging that the bans were due to pressure on the company by Democratic members of Congress. The case also asked the judge to rule that the federal communications decency law was unconstitutional.
The CDA says online service providers like Twitter cannot be held responsible for content posted by others.
Donato’s decision comes almost two weeks after Trump told CNBC he had no interest in returning to Twitter, even if his ban was lifted by Elon Musk, Tesla’s boss, whose $ 44 billion offer to buy Twitter was accepted by board of the company.
Prior to the ban, Trump was an avid Twitter user, tweeting an average of more than 30 posts a day by the end of his presidency. At the time of the ban, Trump had nearly 90 million followers on Twitter.
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