A judge has declared GOP California Rep. Devin Nunes cannot sue Twitter over accounts that have tweeted things he considers to be defamatory.
Two parody accounts called Devin Nunes’ Cow and Devin Nunes’ Mom, as well as Republican strategist Liz Mair, were mentioned in the suit filed in March.
Nunes “seeks to have the court treat Twitter as the publisher or speaker of the content provided by others based on its allowing or not allowing certain content to be on its internet platform,” Judge John Marshall said in a decision Friday. “The court refuses to do so.”
The law in question, Section 230, gives social media companies broad permissions to moderate their own content and makes it so those companies are not held liable if an account on their platform makes defamatory statements.
The Fresno Bee reports Nunes argued that Twitter had a left-leaning bias and that it promoted the tweets in question. For that reason, he argued, Twitter is exempt from protection under Section 230.
While Twitter has been removed as a defendant in the case, the California congressman’s case against the three accounts mentioned continues.
Nunes has filed similar lawsuits in recent months against four different news organizations, including CNN; the Washington Post; Hearst, Esquire’s parent company; and McClatchy, the Fresno Bee’s parent company.
