A lawyer for Elon Musk asked a federal appeals court in New York to throw out his 2018 agreement with US regulators requiring a Tesla Inc. lawyer to screen all his company-related Twitter posts, calling it an illegal limitation on his free-speech rights. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer and now the owner of Twitter Inc., has claimed that the agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission violates the First Amendment to the Constitution and that the SEC is harassing him.
Musk has been battling with the SEC over his social media posts since he tweeted in 2018 that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private, sending shares of the electric-car maker surging. The regulator sued, claiming Musk and Tesla had misled shareholders. Musk and Tesla settled with the SEC, with each paying $20 million and agreeing that Musk’s Tesla-related tweets would be reviewed before he posts them.