Trump's own Supreme Court justice undercut his Facebook lawsuit
Former president Donald Trump announced a lawsuit Wednesday against social media companies that have blocked his accounts, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And in doing so, he advanced a rather novel legal argument: that these platforms are not private businesses but in fact state actors, i.e. de facto government entities. One must be a state actor, after all, to be sued for First Amendment violations. Ipso facto, Trump needs the courts to declare social media behemoths such as Facebook state actors.
This claim was immediately and widely derided by legal experts, who suggested that it was more of a PR stunt and a fundraising ploy than anything arguments that were legitimized by Trump quickly seeking to raise money off it.
And if Trumps lawsuit fails, he might have his own handpicked Supreme Court justices to thank.
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Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote an opinion in 2019 rejecting a somewhat similar effort to declare a platform to be a state actor. In that case, it was the operator of public access channels, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, that had suspended producers over their content.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-trumps-own-supreme-court-justice-undercut-his-facebook-lawsuit/ar-AALVp20