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Court Puts Trump LOLsuits Against YouTube And Meta On Ice Pending Appeal Of Humiliating Twitter Loss

Can we just cut to the chase here?

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President Donald Trump Departs White House En Route To Colorado

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A year ago, Trump sued Twitter, YouTube, and Meta for tortiously deplatforming him. His theory was that the tech companies were carrying out the will of Democrats when they booted him offline, and had thus become government agents, illegally suppressing his free speech in violation of the First Amendment.

It just makes too much sense! Or … the opposite of that.

Thanks to the venue clauses in the platforms’ terms of service, the cases were immediately booted out of federal court in Florida, where Trump had hoped to take advantage of an inapposite consumer protection statute as well as the state’s hilariously unconstitutional Stop Social Media Censorship Act. Which is how they wound up in front of Judges James Donato and Jeffrey White, both of the Northern District of California.

Judge Donato made short work of the Twitter suit, laying waste to every one of its claims in May, and YouTube and Meta were quick to flag the scathing order for Judge White.

Trump’s lawyers responded by noting a recent Ohio state court order refusing to dismiss a suit alleging that Google is a common carrier and a Ninth Circuit decision which rested entirely on ripeness. Trump’s lawyers described these cases respectively as holding “that Google Search is a common carrier” and “reject[ing] First Amendment protections for alleged misleading statements by Defendant Twitter, Inc.”

It was just this scrupulous attention to detail and candor which prompted Judge Donato to remark in his dismissal of the Twitter suit that, “These cases, which are the centerpieces of plaintiffs’ state action argument, are strikingly different from the allegations in the amended complaint.” He also noted that their characterization of the “Twiqbal” pleading standard was wildly off, and “A scant minute of online research makes this abundantly clear.”

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Naturally, Trump appealed. [Insert world’s biggest eye-roll emoji here.]

In fact, there are plenty of cases in the Ninth Circuit affirming that the tech platforms are not the government and thus cannot violate the First Amendment, not to mention the Supreme Court’s 2019 holding in Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck. But in the event, Judge White only referenced Trump v. Twitter in his show cause orders demanding to know “why this Court in its discretion should not stay this matter pending final disposition of the appeal of the dismissal of Donald Trump, et al. v. Twitter, et al., N.D. Cal. Case No. 21-cv-08378-JD (“Twitter”), which is now before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as Case. No. 22-15961.”

In both cases, he’s giving the parties until July 29 to come up with some reason why he shouldn’t ignore them until such time as the Ninth Circuit yeets that dumb Twitter appeal into the sun. At which point he can copy Judge Donato’s paper and everyone can be on their way … to the Supreme Court, for what will doubtless be Trump’s consolidated appeal. And then six to eight Justices can say “LOL, nope,” and we can all read Justice Thomas’s bitter lamentation about Prune Yard and Section 230 and evil tech liberals censoring poor beleaguered conservatives who just want to talk about aborted babies being ground up and put into Covid vaccines.

Can’t hardly wait!

Trump v. Twitter [Docket via Court Listener]
Trump v. Meta [Docket via Court Listener]
Trump v. YouTube [Docket via Court Listener]

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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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