Twitter accused Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of inappropriately using his authority to retaliate against the platform for banning former President Donald Trump.
The social media platform filed a federal lawsuit Monday in a Northern California court alleging that the attorney general announced an investigation against them and other big tech companies in the days after the deadly Capitol riot that led to his ban from the platform.
Paxton’s office demanded that Twitter, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon provide their policies and practices regarding their content moderation.
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“Paxton made clear that he will use the full weight of his office, including his expansive investigatory powers, to retaliate against Twitter for having made editorial decisions with which he disagrees,” lawyers for the company wrote.
Twitter is hoping the court will declare that the First Amendment prevents Paxton’s investigation, issue a temporary restraining order, and preliminarily and permanently enjoining Paxton and his colleagues from initiating any additional action.
The attorney general, in announcing his demands of the social media companies, called the “unprecedented step of removing and blocking President Donald Trump from online media platforms” a “seemingly coordinated de-platforming” effort that “wholly silences those whose speech and political beliefs do not align with leaders of Big Tech companies.”
Two sides had tried to work out an agreement but were not able to do so, Twitter noted in its legal filing.
Twitter decided to ban Trump on Jan. 13, and others followed. The former president had been permanently suspended because Twitter had claimed that two of his tweets violated its Glorification of Violence policy, ruling that they could be viewed as an incitement of violence, the platform said.
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Months earlier, Paxton filed a lawsuit contending that a handful of battleground states that went for President Biden made unconstitutional changes to the way their state votes. The suit, which the Supreme Court ultimately decided not to hear, even though more than a hundred Republicans and a dozen states filed amicus briefs, aimed at getting the highest court to rule that states can send electors to vote for Trump regardless of the actual outcome.
