Texas’ Republican Attorney General, Ken Paxton has secured another massive victory against Twitter in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco with the court refusing to reconsider its decision to throw out Twitter’s lawsuit against the Republican Attorney General.
AG Paxton had issued civil investigative demands (CIDs) to Twitter in order to determine if the company’s widespread content moderation and censorship practices violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Twitter, in its attempt to avoid revealing its corrupt practices, sued the Attorney General and alleged that the investigation chilled its free speech rights and asserted that its publicly-stated content moderation policies were more puffery.
After the district court first dismissed Twitter’s lawsuit, the company appealed the ruling and a three-judge appellate panel ruled that Twitter’s lawsuit was not prudentially ripe. The company then attempted a reconsideration by the full court, which was further rejected without a vote, with the panel amending its decision to hold that Twitter’s lawsuit was not just prudentially unripe but constitutionally unripe.
From its very beginning, Twitter was allegedly intending to avoid transparency and share its politically motivated censorship practices. The latest revelations in the “Twitter Files” have confirmed that the company’s biased censorship practices were worse than what the Attorney General was seeking to investigate.
“I’ve been asking Twitter for years to answer questions about its content moderation and large-scale censorship, but Twitter’s only response has been to try and hide behind its bogus lawsuits against me,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Now that yet another court has ruled in our favor and more details surrounding Twitter’s censorship have come to light, I look forward to helping get to the bottom of any actions that the company took to mislead consumers.”
Paxton Wins Legal Battle Against Twitter in Fight for Free Speech and Transparency:https://t.co/YbxWkFz5Ec
— Texas Attorney General (@TXAG) December 27, 2022
“The issues here are not fit for judicial decision because Twitter’s allegations do not show that the issuance of the CID is chilling its speech or causing it other cognizable injury that the requested injunction would redress. The case is thus constitutionally unripe, and the district court’s order dismissing the case is AFFIRMED,” the court opinion read.
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