A US judge has refused to strike down the billionaire’s 2018 settlement with the US sharemarket regulator, which requires him to run market-sensitive social media posts by a company lawyer.
Elon Musk could soon own Twitter, but his own use of the platform will remain constrained by a 2018 agreement he signed with the US sharemarket regulator.
Musk’s assertion that he agreed to the SEC’s conditions because of the financial burden was “wholly unpersuasive,” the judge found.Musk had argued that the agreement to settle accusations of securities violations infringed on his right to freedom of speech and that the Securities and Exchange Commission had used the agreement as an excuse to “launch endless, boundless” investigations of his public statements.
Musk’s assertion that he agreed to the SEC’s conditions because of the financial burden was “wholly unpersuasive,” Liman wrote. Musk, the judge said, “was already a multibillionaire in 2018 and one of the wealthiest individuals in the world.” The decision came two days after Twitter’s board agreed to sell the company to Musk for $US44 billion — a transaction that still has to win the approval of shareholders. He had previously accused the social network of censoring free speech and has said he thinks people should be allowed to speak more freely on Twitter, which in recent years has sought to restrict misinformation, hate speech and other problematic statements on its platform.
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