Trump Quietly Ends Lawsuit Over 2021 Twitter Ban

President Donald Trump has quietly ended a lawsuit against Twitter (now X) over the social network banning him following the US Capitol riots.

The lawsuit, filed in 2021, accused the company—still more than a year away from being acquired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk—of violating his First Amendment rights by permanently suspending his account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

On Jan. 6, 2021, as his supporters stormed the US Capitol building in a bid to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president, Trump posted a video in which he continued to lie about winning the 2020 election before telling those gathered at the Capitol to “go home now.” But the clip ended with him telling them “We love you, you’re very special.”

The First Amendment protects people from government censorship, but private companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter are largely free to police their own platforms and ban those who violate their terms of service.

As such, a court dismissed the lawsuit in 2022, but Trump’s team appealed, arguing that Twitter acted at the behest of lawmakers who called for him to be banned. Judges who heard that appeal in late 2023 appeared skeptical, Politico reported. Since then, there had been little movement on the case, and it was paused in November when Trump’s team notified the court that “settlement talks were ongoing,” Bloomberg reports.

Once Musk took over Twitter in 2022, Trump’s account was reinstated. By then, Trump had started his own social media company, Truth Social. Trump’s accounts on on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram were also revived.

Court documents about Trump dropping the case against X, first spotted by TechCrunch, states that all “parties have agreed that each side shall bear its costs and fees.”

Trump was also banned from Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube and sued Meta and Google over that, too. Last month, Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle that case. According to court documents, the YouTube case was stayed in 2022 pending the Twitter appeal and “administratively closed” in late 2023.

Musk is now an advisor to Trump and working in his administration via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is charged with cutting wasteful spending. However, Musk’s conflicts of interest have drawn widespread criticism, as have moves to allow young staffers with no experience to access critical government payments systems.

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About Will McCurdy

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I’m a reporter covering weekend news. Before joining PCMag in 2024, I picked up bylines in BBC News, The Guardian, The Times of London, The Daily Beast, Vice, Slate, Fast Company, The Evening Standard, The i, TechRadar, and Decrypt Media.

I’ve been a PC gamer since you had to install games from multiple CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I’m passionate about the intersection of tech and human lives. I’ve covered everything from crypto scandals to the art world, as well as conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and foreign affairs.

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