How Trump's own Supreme Court justice undercut his Facebook lawsuit

[Judi Lynn]

Aaron Blake 19 hrs ago

Former president Donald Trump announced a lawsuit Wednesday against social media companies that have blocked his accounts, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And in doing so, he advanced a rather novel legal argument: that these platforms are not private businesses but in fact state actors, i.e. de facto government entities. One must be a state actor, after all, to be sued for First Amendment violations. Ipso facto, Trump needs the courts to declare social media behemoths such as Facebook state actors.

This claim was immediately and widely derided by legal experts, who suggested that it was more of a PR stunt and a fundraising ploy than anything — arguments that were legitimized by Trump quickly seeking to raise money off it.
And if Trump’s lawsuit fails, he might have his own handpicked Supreme Court justices to thank.

BuzzFeed’s Zoe Tillman has a must-read piece about the legal ins and outs of this case, with the big takeaway being that Trump’s lawsuit largely rests on ideas that courts have rejected. And among the key rulings working against Trump could be a Supreme Court one written by his appointee two years ago.

Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote an opinion in 2019 rejecting a somewhat similar effort to declare a platform to be a state actor. In that case, it was the operator of public access channels, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, that had suspended producers over their content.

More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-trumps-own-supreme-court-justice-undercut-his-facebook-lawsuit/ar-AALVp20?li=BBnb7Kz

[no_hypocrisy]

1. If the complaint(s) is/are meant as a fund-raiser, that is idiotic.

Trump now faces the three social media giants not only moving for dismissal, but moving with charges of a frivolous lawsuit. That means your claims were knowingly meaningless and filed for the purposes of vexation (among other reasons).

You know what the penalties are for filing frivolous lawsuits?

1. Treble damages. That means your attorney asks the court to award damages (amount of $) and then multiply that number by 3.
2. Your attorney risks penalties for filing the frivolous lawsuit. It's an ethics violation. Not that you can easily be disbarred, but your attorney can be censured or suspended, depending on the facts of the claim.

[EYESORE 9001]

2. Does boof boy's previous opinion preclude changing his so-called mind?

Shameless shithead that he is, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear a diametrically oppositional opinion to support rump.