Musk’s X lawsuit against Media Matters is headed to trial
Elon Musk’s X Corp and Media Matters for America are headed to trial next year following a judge’s refusal to toss the billionaire’s lawsuit.
In an order [PDF] published yesterday, Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas decided X had adequately argued the plausibility of its claims against Media Matters in a 2023 lawsuit. Media Matters, on the other hand, failed to convince the judge of any of its reasoning on why the case needed to be dismissed.
“As the Court must accept all well-pleaded facts in the complaint as true and view them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff,” O’Connor wrote.
“Understandably, many of these facts are disputed,” O’Connor continued, but because the allegations potentially could be true and were reasonably argued, X “has provided sufficient allegations to survive dismissal.”
How we got here
For those that don’t recall, Media Matters published a couple of research reports back in November 2023, documenting ads on X from companies like IBM, Apple, Oracle and AT&T appearing alongside posts promoting hate speech. Screenshots were presented as evidence, but it didn’t take X long to call foul, alleging that the account Media Matters used only followed major brands and racist trolls in an effort to stack the deck for its purposes.
“Media Matters knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform,” the site formerly known as Twitter argued in its original complaint.
Media Matters, which has called the suit “frivolous” and “meant to bully X’s critics into silence,” countered the lawsuit with a request to have it tossed back in March on the grounds the northern district of Texas didn’t have jurisdiction, that the venue was improper and that X failed to state a claim.
Unfortunately for Media Matters, X’s lawyers did their homework, inasmuch as they were sure to include Oracle and AT&T – both mentioned in the original Media Matters reports – in their original suit. Both firms are headquartered in the Northern District of Texas, and thus, said O’Connor, his court has jurisdiction over the matter.
“Media Matters targeted Texas,” O’Connor concluded. Likewise, X “sufficiently alleges a substantial part of the events occurred within the Northern District of Texas,” thus satisfying the venue requirement, too.
“To survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, a plaintiff need only allege that the defendant has ‘do[ne] something independently unlawful or tortious,’ that would be ‘actionable under a recognized tort,'” O’Connor reasoned, concluding X had done that.
In short, this needs to go to court to get hashed out since the Northern District of Texas lacks any rules prohibiting companies from filing strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP suits, which was the basis for a California judge tossing a similar lawsuit X filed against the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
X’s advertising woes have been considerable and public, since Musk took over the company – as has a rise in hate speech on the platform. Musk has been publicly critical of advertisers who’ve left in the wake of Media Matters and others documenting hate speech on X, telling some to “go fuck [themselves]” before finally suing a bunch of them for cutting or eliminating ad spending on X.
Because there’s no way to prove you actually care about advertisers by suing a bunch of them for exercising their right to free speech.
If there are no other challenges to the X/Media Matters lawsuit, the trial will begin in April 2025. Neither X nor Media Matters responded to questions for this story. ®