A Florida federal judge ruled Tuesday that being president doesn’t preclude Donald Trump from following the company’s terms of service, a blow to Trump’s legal efforts to return to the platform after being banned last year.
U.S. District Judge Robert Scola Jr. allowed Twitter to move the lawsuit from the Southern District of Florida to the Northern District of California, where Twitter is based and where the company’s terms say all legal proceedings must occur if a user decides to sue them.
“The Court finds that Trump’s status as President of the United States does not exclude him from the requirements of the forum selection clause in Twitter’s Terms of Service,” wrote Scola, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. “The Plaintiffs have failed to satisfy their heavy burden to show that this case should not be transferred.”
Trump’s attorneys have argued in the lawsuit that, since he was president when he was banned from the platform, he is exempt from some of Twitter’s terms and that it is in the public interest for the case to stay in Florida. Scola disagreed with this notion and said Trump’s team “has not advanced any legal authority to support his contention.”
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Earlier this month, another federal judge in Florida granted a similar request to transfer Trump’s lawsuit against Google and its video platform YouTube to a court in California.
Trump, who was banned from Twitter permanently due to his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, has asked the court to force Twitter to restore his account on the platform.
He has also said that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey “succumbed to the coercion efforts of Democratic lawmakers.” Trump has filed class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, claiming that all the major social media platforms have muzzled him and other conservatives.
Trump asked a federal judge last month to force Facebook to reinstate him to the platform as he seeks to use the social media giant to influence elections in 2022 — and possibly a 2024 bid of his own.
Trump’s supporters are worried that if he does not return to major social media platforms in the coming months, he will face significant challenges getting his message out to the masses in future elections.
Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, internet companies are generally exempt from liability for the material that users post. The law, which provides a legal “safe harbor” for internet companies, also allows social media platforms to moderate or censor posts that, for instance, are obscene or violate a platform’s standards so long as they are acting in “good faith.”
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But Trump and other politicians have long argued that Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms have abused that protection and should lose their immunity — or at least have to earn it by satisfying requirements set by the government.
