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Rock the Vote and other voter rights organizations have sued the Trump administration, saying the president’s executive order allegedly intended to stop online censorship actually violates the First Amendment.
Rock the Vote was joined by Voto Latino, Common Cause, Free Press and Maplight in filing the class action lawsuit in federal court in California.
According to the plaintiffs, the Trump social media order “targets online platforms with a range of official reprisal — including threats to their established legal immunity … investigation by government enforcement agencies, and the loss of significant government spending — for engaging in constitutionally protected speech, including combating misinformation online.”
The nonprofit organizations say they rely on social media and other online platforms to raise voter awareness and increase voter turnout, among other things.
They allege that the Trump social media order impedes their ability to conduct voter registration initiatives and encourages the spread of misinformation related to voting by mail.
The plaintiffs say the use of online platforms for voter awareness and registration is crucial this year because the coronavirus pandemic has made it impractical to register voters at concerts, festivals and other large gatherings as they have done in the past.
“The online platforms upon which Plaintiffs rely have First Amendment rights, including the right to curate, fact-check, and comment on third-party posts, as well as the right to speak and not to speak,” the class action lawsuit says. “Specifically, the First Amendment protects a speaker’s ‘expression of editorial opinion on matters of public importance,’ which ‘is entitled to the most exacting degree of First Amendment protection.’”
The plaintiffs maintain the Trump social media order “presents online platforms with an untenable choice: either let President Trump and others post lies without any context or fact-checking, or face the prospect of losing Section 230’s protections, which immunize online services from liability based on the content their users post, and specifically protect their ability to curate content broadly.”
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was enacted by Congress in 1996 in an effort to “safeguard the interests of both speakers and recipients by providing online platforms with an immunity from potential liability for curating, editing, and screening third-party content, or for choosing not to do any of those things,” the class action lawsuit says.
Simply put, the lawsuit states the Trump social media order “is intended to punish online platforms for their curation decisions” and was “triggered by the efforts of an online platform, in the midst of a global pandemic, to ensure the accuracy of information about the fundamental right to vote in advance of the upcoming November elections.”
The Trump social media order was issued two days after Twitter attached a notice to one of the president’s tweets allegedly containing misinformation about voter fraud as it relates to mail-in ballots.
The voter rights groups say since taking office, Trump has repeatedly threatened to punish online platforms that publish content disagreeing with his viewpoint.
They cite an example from Aug. 28, 2018, in which Trump tweeted a threat “to regulate Google for purportedly prioritizing bad news about him while suppressing news that is good.”
In addition, the plaintiffs point to the president’s repeated, public denouncement of mail-in voting as a valid option for voters wishing to avoid potential COVID-19 exposure at polling places. They list examples of other tweets and Trump’s March 30 appearance on Fox & Friends.
“This is not how the Constitution works,” Ashkhen Kazaryan, director of civil liberties at TechFreedom, previously told Business Insider. “The First Amendment protects Twitter from Trump. It does not protect Trump from Twitter.”
According to a Forbes report, David Greene, civil liberties director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has called the executive order “a transparent attempt to retaliate against Twitter for fact-checking the president’s posts, as well as an obvious threat to any other company that might want to do the same.”
The plaintiffs claim the president has admitted the motivation behind the executive order was his own “concern that certain online platforms allegedly ‘have points of view’ and ‘we’re fed up with it, and it’s unfair, and it’s been very unfair.’”
“The Executive Order is intended to coerce those platforms to adopt the President’s preferred editorial viewpoint,” the class action lawsuit alleges.
Because the Trump social media order is legally binding until it’s rescinded or determined to be unlawful, the plaintiffs are seeking a declaration that the executive order is unconstitutional and an injunction of its enforcement.
The voter rights organizations are also asking the Court to award court costs, attorneys’ fees and any other relief deemed appropriate.
Do you think the president’s executive order stifles free speech or protects it? Tell us your thoughts below.
The plaintiffs are represented by Michael G. Rhodes, Travis LeBlanc, Kathleen R. Hartnett and Bethany C. Lobo of Cooley LLP; David Greene, Corynne McSherry and Aaron Mackey of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Kristy Parker, Ngozi J. Nezianya and Ben Berwick of The Protect Democracy Project Inc.
The Trump Social Media Order Class Action Lawsuit is Rock the Vote, et al. v. Donald J. Trump, et al., Case No. 3:20-cv-06021, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Read About More Class Action Lawsuits & Class Action Settlements:
Trump Admin Faces Lawsuit Over USPS Rollbacks Ahead of Voting by Mail
TikTok Sues Trump Administration In Effort to Block U.S. Ban
One thought on Voter Rights Groups File Class Action Lawsuit Over Trump Social Media Order
This site is so far left and it should not be on either so sad!