Elon Musk’s Supreme Court Endgame in Defamation Lawsuit

, alleges that an article by Media Matters showing that X had paired high-profile company ads with pro-Nazi content was somehow contrived, false. By suing, Musk aims to deter Media Matters and other organizations not just from publicizing X’s advertising practices but from fighting disinformation generally. Musk’s suit against Media Matters presents a genuine threat—to the watchdog, of course, but also to the First Amendment itself.

In legal parlance, Musk’s suit against MMFA is a textbook SLAPP suit—an intimidation lawsuit, brought not on merits but as a way to coerce critics into backing down by crushing them with frivolous and expensive civil litigation. Such suits are prohibited in many states for their chilling effects on speech. But there is no overarching federalX filed its suit against Media Matters in a federal court friendly to right-wing ideologues and their political plays.

In going after Media Matters, X means to weaponize the First Amendment against its critics. Musk has long reveled in alleging liberal-led censorship, even as he. Shortly after taking over Twitter, Musk gutted its content moderation infrastructure. He staged a circus by releasing pre-acquisition internal files and claiming that the U.S. government conspired to censor conservatives and, inter alia, cover up the crimes of Hunter Biden. It was all a conspiracy, he said, against “free speech.

Even if the Northern District of Texas did have jurisdiction, that court should not find any merit in X’s suit. Whether unable to rebut the Media Matters report or unwilling to settle for citing facts in X’s favor, if any exist, the X complaint instead advances claims almost certain to be proved false.X asserts that Media Matters “manufactured” white-nationalist content juxtaposed with advertisements and fraudulently portrayed it as X’s doing.

Musk’s endgame is getting to the Supreme Court. There, X could fight to push First Amendment jurisprudence further rightward, aiding both corporations averse to critique and purveyors of disinformation, giving them new paths to avoiding accountability and retaliating against journalists and watchdogs. For these reasons, among many others, X’s Texas suit against D.C.

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