Musk’s now-infamous 2018 tweet claimed he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share, a statement the SEC said was untrue and that led to wild swings in the company’s stock price. To avoid enforcement, Musk agreed to a settlement that required him to have a company lawyer approve his social media posts about Tesla. Though he agreed to the “Twitter sitter” provision, Musk has subsequently challenged it as a violation of his First Amendment rights.
A US District Court and the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Musk’s request to declare the Twitter sitter provision unenforceable. “We see no evidence to support Musk’s contention that the SEC has used the consent decree to conduct bad-faith, harassing investigations of his protected speech,” a three-judge appeals court panel wrote last year.