California judge dismisses Elon Musk lawsuit, says it was intended to dissuade critics

A federal judge in California dismissed a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X Corporation, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday, writing in his decision that it was clear that the lawsuit was intended to punish dissenting voices.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer, of the Northern District of California, ruled that the effort violated California’s law, called anti-SLAPP, that prohibits lawsuits intended to discourage people from further public criticism.

“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose. Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech,” Breyer wrote in his opinion.

X Corporation took the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate to court in July 2023 alleging that the group published three reports based on “flawed ‘research’ methodologies” in order to “silence” speech from groups that the center disagreed with.

The first report, titled “The Disinformation Dozen,” was published in March 2021 and focused on 12 high-profile Twitter accounts of people who opposed COVID-19 vaccinations.

The second report, “Fact check: Musk’s claim about a fall in hate speech doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,” was published in November 2022, after Musk took over Twitter. That report contradicted Musk’s statements that hate speech on the platform had declined.

The third report, titled “Toxic Twitter, “ was published in February 2023. It detailed how the site generated millions of dollars in ad revenue by bringing back several banned accounts.

In the lawsuit, X Corporation argued that the center unlawfully “scraped” the platform for data and published cherry-picked results that media outlets published and which caused the company significant financial harm in the form of lost ad revenue.

Breyer, in his decision, said that X Corporation’s motivation for bringing the lawsuit was “evident.”

“X Corp. has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp.—and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism,” wrote Breyer.

The judge went on to write that “if CCDH’s publications were defamatory, that would be one thing, but X Corp. has carefully avoided saying that they are.”