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Trump announced the suits during a press conference Wednesday, saying that he is asking a court in Florida “to order an immediate halt to social media companies’ illegal, shameful censorship of the American people.”
“We’re going to hold big tech very accountable,” he said. During the nearly hour-long event, Trump and others involved in the effort made grandiose claims about the potential for the lawsuits that are likely at odds with the suits’ potential for success.
Less than an hour after the event, Trump’s team began sending out fundraising appeals related to the lawsuits, and the website recruiting participants for the proposed class action suits also featured a link to donate.
The complaints against Twitter, Facebook and YouTube claim that the platforms’ removal of Trump amounts to censorship and allege that the decisions violate his First Amendment right to free speech. Such actions by the companies have previously been protected under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, a federal law that provides legal immunity to websites that moderate user-generated content, and has been used by tech platforms to nip many lawsuits in the bud.
“Plaintiff respectfully asks this Court … to prohibit Defendants from exercising censorship, editorial control, or prior restraint in its many forms over the posts of President Trump and Putative Class Members,” the Twitter complaint states. (A court still must certify that each of the lawsuits can proceed as a class action.)
The complaints also take issue with the way that the platforms attempted to address the spread of misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic, including by leaning on the CDC, an organization Trump clashed with as president and which the suit claim has a “highly questionable reputation.”
Among the relief requested by the suits is an order that the social media companies immediately reinstate the accounts of Trump and other members of the proposed class action suit removed from the platforms, an order requiring the social media companies to remove warning labels on Trump’s posts and a judgment declaring Section 230 unconstitutional.
Prior legal efforts against Big Tech
The push to bring legal action against tech platforms over bias allegations has spread nationwide. In May, Florida passed a law allowing politicians that have been suspended or removed from social media to sue those companies.
The judge’s ruling also said the Florida law ran counter to Section 230, which Trump had sought to weaken with his executive order.
In Congress, numerous bills have been proposed to narrow the scope of Section 230, including by some Democrats who believe tech companies are not doing enough to curb hate speech and harassment online.
But much of the momentum for changing Section 230 has come from Republicans upset about how social media companies have enforced their rules when conservatives have broken them. Trump, in his order, accused tech companies of “engaging in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse,” and pushed for the Federal Communications Commission to “clarify” Section 230.
Legal experts and FCC officials themselves questioned the agency’s authority to do that, citing the same First Amendment issues that tied up the Florida law. President Joe Biden later rescinded Trump’s order.
Now, having failed to turn the machinery of the US government against the tech industry, Trump is trying to get at it through the courts himself. But with Section 230 still on the books, it’s unclear how he could succeed.
CNN’s Michael Warren and Ashley Semler contributed reporting.