A federal judge in California on Friday dismissed former President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Twitter, rejecting claims the social media giant illegally censored him by closing his account.
In a 17-page ruling, U.S. District Judge James Donato of the Northern District of California said the arguments of Trump and four other defendants that losing their Twitter platforms amounted to state-sponsored censorship “are not starting from a position of strength.”
“Twitter is a private company, and ‘the First Amendment applies only to governmental abridgements of speech, and not to alleged abridgements by private companies,’” Donato wrote, citing other social media speech cases in the Northern District and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
