Former President Donald Trump is suing Twitter to get his account reinstated, according to a new court filing.
Trump, who was banned from the platform for his words and actions preceding the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill, said in Friday’s filing seeking a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida that the website, which exercises “immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous” power over U.S. political discourse, amounted to censorship in violation of the First Amendment.
“Defendant is liable for its own speech as well as its own actions. When Defendant works as a partner with the government to censor its Users’ First Amendment rights, Defendant is legally accountable for its deeds. … Defendant’s false statements posted on Plaintiff’s Twitter account are unfair trade and deceptive practices, as Users joined Twitter with the expectation that they would be treated fairly and without slander,” read the filing.
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Trump alleged Twitter acted at the behest of Democrats who “repeatedly encouraged Defendant to censor and restrain Plaintiff’s views, or face catastrophic legal and regulatory consequences.”
“While government officials are permitted to express their, or the government’s, preferences about what a private company should or should not do, they cannot exert coercive pressure on private parties to censor the speech of others,” Trump’s filing read, adding that Democratic members of Congress and President Joe Biden “have subjected social media companies and their CEOs, including Defendant, to increasing pressure to censor speech disfavored by them, and to promote their favored speech, or else face catastrophic legislative and/or regulatory consequences. … As such, Plaintiff’s censorship was an unconstitutional deprivation of Plaintiff’s free speech, in that the censorship was in response to government coercion.”
The Biden administration has urged social media platforms to become more heavy-handed in policing misinformation regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki saying in July the administration was working “to engage with [social media platforms] to better understand the enforcement of social media platform policies” before singling out “the false narrative that remains active out there about COVID-19 vaccines causing infertility.”
Biden put his criticism of Big Tech platforms more bluntly, asserting that Facebook was “killing people” when asked what message he had for social media companies.
After many of Trump’s posts were hit with cautionary labels indicating they contained misinformation, he was widely deplatformed following the Jan. 6 attack, with Twitter, Facebook, and others arguing Trump’s words and actions preceding the riot incited violence. Though the bans may not be permanent, the Big Tech platforms have indicated Trump may not be welcomed back anytime soon, with Facebook’s independent Oversight Board determining on June 4 the ban would remain in place for at least two years.
Trump retaliated with a lawsuit against Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding “an end to the shadow-banning, a stop to the silencing, and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing, and canceling that you know so well.” Those on the Right have even moved to develop competing sites, with Trump allies recently developing GETTR, a platform the former president has not joined.
Facebook said it has received criticism from both the Left and the Right.
“While many Republicans think we should take one course, many Democrats think we should do the exact opposite. We’ve faced criticism from Republicans for being biased against conservatives and Democrats for not taking more steps to restrict the exact same content,” a spokesperson for Facebook said in an email to the Washington Examiner. “We have rules in place to protect free expression, and we will continue to apply them impartially.”
Rep. Madison Cawthorn argued that these incidents are consequential because they restrict access to information.
“[Censorship] doesn’t allow us to be able to talk about controversial issues. It doesn’t allow us to be able to challenge the status quo to actually make changes in our country that are going to be beneficial for all Americans,” he told the Washington Examiner, citing free speech protections as instrumental in allowing criticism of segregation and the Vietnam War to lead to meaningful reform.
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Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. A representative for Twitter declined to comment.
