SAN FRANCISCO - The attorney general of Texas was sued in California federal court by Twitter for allegedly restricting the social media platform's rights to free speech and freedom of the press, according to documents filed on March 8.
According to the lawsuit, Texas AG Ken Paxton has a long history of complaints with Twitter and other social media/big tech companies, including accusing them of censoring or stifling conservative voices and opinions on the platform and internet.
Paxton complained on Fox News about Twitter censoring false or misleading content regarding election and voting practices in May of last year, and called the platform "politically biased," the suit says.
In September 2020, Paxton filed a comment with the Federal Communications Commission urging the FCC to construe a provision of federal law after Twitter continued to censor false and misleading tweets from former president Donald Trump, the suit says.
Twitter says that Trump's inappropriate tweets increased in frequency after the November 2020 election, until he spoke to a crowd in January of this year where he continued to insist the election was stolen, and encouraged the crowd to march to the Capitol Building, to "fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
After Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter, Paxton tweeted that he would "fight [Twitter] with all he's got."
Paxton then filed a civil investigative demand to see Twitter's content moderation policies, despite Twitter having a First Amendment right to its highly confidential internal documents, the suit claims.
Paxton is sued for violating the First Amendment with his retaliatory investigation, and asks the court to cease Paxton's investigation and allow a restraining order for Twitter against the attorney and his office.