The district court judge who handled
the suit, Trump appointee Trevor McFadden, held that law didn’t cover
the companies’ virtual, digital platforms. The notion of excluding
online businesses from anti-discrimination protections so worried the
District government that D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine weighed in
with a friend-of-the-court brief asking the D.C. Circuit to reject that
position.
But the appeals court judges — Clinton
appointee Judith Rogers, George W. Bush appointee Thomas Griffith, and
George H.W. Bush appointee Raymond Randolph — said a 1981 decision from
another court limited the law to businesses operating in a “particular
place” somewhere in Washington.
“The D.C. Court of Appeals has
interpreted this statute and at minimum, its interpretation is a
reasonable one. We have no basis to believe it would reach a different
conclusion on reconsideration,” the D.C. Circuit judges wrote.
Freedom Watch founder Larry Klayman called the decision “outrageous” and vowed to press on with the case.
“We’re going to obviously move for en banc reconsideration and go to the Supremes, if we have to,” he said.
Klayman said the timing of the
decision seemed spurred by Trump lashing out against Twitter in recent
days. “Obviously, it’s a very political issue. … None of those judges
particularly care for Trump. It looked like they rushed the decision off
their desk to make a point.”
The longtime legal gadfly blasted as
“outrageous” the court’s ruling that online ventures are beyond the
reach of the D.C. Human Rights Act. “D.C. law can’t just apply if you’re
standing in Farragut Square,” he said.
Racine’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the appeals court decision."
~~~~~
UPDATE/edit 05/28:
Trump is so desperate, his lies are increasing and his behaviour is more repulsive than ever before. He is like a wounded wild animal just scrambling in an attempt to salvage the end of his reign of terror. He will go down in the history books as the ultimate worst and most despised holder of the office of President of the United States .
~ From the New York Times (via MSN):
Trump's Proposed Order On Social Media Could GHarm One Person In Particular: Trump
By, Peter Baker & Daisuke Wakabayashi
"WASHINGTON — President Trump, who built his political career on the
power of a flame-throwing Twitter account, has now gone to war with
Twitter, angered that it would presume to fact-check his messages.
But the punishment he is threatening could force social media companies
to crack down even more on customers just like Mr. Trump.
The draft executive order that Mr. Trump
signed on Thursday
seeks to strip liability protection in certain cases for companies like
Twitter, Google and Facebook for the content on their sites, meaning
they could face legal jeopardy if they allowed false and defamatory
posts. Without a liability shield, they presumably would have to be more
aggressive about policing messages that press the boundaries — like the
president’s.
That, of course, is not the outcome Mr. Trump wants. What he wants is to
have the freedom to post anything he likes without the companies
applying any judgment to his messages, as Twitter did this week when it
began appending “get the facts” warnings to some of his false posts on
voter fraud. Furious at what he called “censorship” — even though his
messages were not in fact deleted — Mr. Trump is wielding the proposed
executive order like a club to compel the company to back down.
It may not work even as intended. Plenty of lawyers quickly said on
Thursday that he was claiming power to do something he does not have by
essentially revising the interpretation of Section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act, the main law passed by Congress in 1996 to
lay out the rules of the road for online media. Legal experts predicted
such a move would be challenged and possibly struck down by the courts.
But the logic of Mr. Trump’s order is intriguing because it attacks the
very legal provision that has allowed him such latitude to publish with
impunity a whole host of inflammatory, factually distorted messages that
a media provider might feel compelled to take down if it was forced
into the legal role of a publisher that faced the risk of legal
liability rather than a distributor that does not.
“Ironically, Donald Trump is a big beneficiary of Section 230,” said
Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel for the American Civil
Liberties Union, which instantly objected to the proposed order. “If
platforms were not immune under the law, then they would not risk the
legal liability that could come with hosting Donald Trump’s lies,
defamation and threats.”
Mr. Trump has long posted false and disparaging messages to his 80
million followers on Twitter, disregarding complaints about their
accuracy or fairness. In recent weeks, he has
repeatedly issued tweets that essentially
falsely accused Joe Scarborough,
the MSNBC host, of murdering a staff member in 2001 when he was a
congressman. Mr. Scarborough was 800 miles away at the time and the
police found no signs of foul play. The aide’s widower
asked Twitter to delete the messages, but it refused.
Mr. Trump and his allies argue that social media companies
have shown bias against conservatives
and need to be reined in. While they are private firms rather than the
government, the president and his allies argue that they have in effect
become the public square envisioned by the founders when they crafted
the First Amendment and therefore should not be weighing in on one side
or the other.
As a legal matter, Mr. Trump and his allies would be on stronger ground
if Congress were to rewrite the law, as some Republicans like Senators
Josh Hawley of Missouri and
Marco Rubio of Florida are vowing to do.
“If @Twitter wants to editorialize & comment on users’ posts, it
should be divested of its special status under federal law (Section 230)
& forced to play by same rules as all other publishers,”
Mr. Hawley said this week on, yes, Twitter. “Fair is fair.”
The order that Mr. Trump is considering was not finished on Thursday
morning and may yet be revised before he signs it, aides cautioned. A
draft version said that an online provider that “restricts access to
content” in certain cases “forfeits any protection from being deemed a
‘publisher or speaker’” under the law.
The Federal Trade Commission would be directed to consider taking action
against providers that “restrict speech in ways that do not align with
those entities’ public representations about those practices.”
Mr. Trump on Thursday framed his goal as combating bias. “This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!”
he wrote, also on Twitter.
But even some government officials said his plan was unenforceable.
“This does not work,” Jessica Rosenworcel, a member of the Federal
Communications Commission who was first appointed under President Barack
Obama, said in a statement. “Social media can be frustrating. But an
executive order that would turn the Federal Communications Commission
into the president’s speech police is not the answer. It’s time for
those in Washington to speak up for the First Amendment. History won’t
be kind to silence.”
The Communications Decency Act was passed during the dawn of the modern
information age, intended at first to make it easier for online sites
run by early pioneer companies like Prodigy and AOL to block pornography
without running afoul of legal challenges.
By terming such sites as distributors rather than publishers, Section
230 gave them important immunity from lawsuits. Over time, the law
became the guarantor of a rollicking, almost no-holds-barred internet by
letting sites set rules for what is and is not allowed without being
liable for everything posted by visitors, as opposed to a newspaper,
which is responsible for whatever it publishes.
Since Section 230 was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, the
courts have repeatedly shot down challenges to get around it, invoking a
broad interpretation of immunity. In recent years, the court system has
been flooded with litigants claiming that social media companies
blocked them or their content.
As a result, Mr. Trump may face an uphill road with his draft executive
order. Daphne Keller, who teaches at Stanford Law School and has written
extensively on internet law and regulation, said the order appeared to
be “95 percent political rhetoric and theater that doesn’t have legal
effect and is inconsistent with what the courts have said.”
However, Ms. Keller, who worked as an associate general counsel at
Google for 10 years, said that even if the order did not carry legal
weight, it may still be challenged because it was potentially an abuse
of power that could violate the First Amendment rights of the companies.
Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University Law School and
co-director of the High Tech Law Institute there, said that the order
“doesn’t stand a chance in court” but that it could do some damage until
a legal challenge reached the judicial system. “Section 230 is a magnet
for controversy, and this order pours fuel on the fire,” he said.
While the courts have sided with the internet companies, Congress is a
different matter. Both Republicans and Democrats have taken issue with
the protections afforded to social media companies, even though they
disagree on why.
Republicans have accused the companies of censoring conservative voices
and violating the spirit of the law that the internet should be a forum
for a diversity of political discourse. Democrats have argued that the
companies have not done enough to remove problematic content or police
harassment.
Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the United States Naval
Academy and the author of a book about the law, “The Twenty-Six Words
That Created the Internet,” said he believed that Section 230 would be
repealed by Congress in the next few years. He believes that the
internet of 1996, when the law was written to protect start-ups, is
different now and that many of the tech firms protected under the
statute are among the most valuable companies in the world.
Without Section 230, courts would be forced to apply the protections of
the First Amendment to the modern internet. “We haven’t had a test of
that yet,” Mr. Kosseff said, “because there was always Section 230.”
In the meantime, Mr. Trump’s proposed order may still have an impact. “I
think what the order is trying to do is say a company like Twitter
holds itself out to be a neutral platform, and when it is biased against
conservatives, it is acting deceptively,” said Jeffrey Westling, a
technology and innovation policy fellow at the R Street Institute, a
public policy research organization.
Mr. Westling said the legal theory would probably be difficult to
pursue. “The issue I have and I think a lot of people are starting to
realize is the executive order doesn’t need to be legally enforceable to
still be a threat to these companies,” he said. “The companies will
likely win any challenge, but no one wants to go through litigation. It
becomes a cost-benefit analysis of, ‘Is it worth it to put a fact check
the next time the president puts a false tweet out there?’”
Peter Baker reported from Washington, and Daisuke Wakabayashi from
Oakland, Calif. Kate Conger contributed reporting from Oakland, and
Maggie Haberman from New York."
~~~~~
Wrong guys - Trump loves lawsuits, he thrives on them. Lawsuits drive the maniac. Money is no option for him, nor are his crooked, foul and demonic attorneys. And yes, it is worth it to"... put up a fact check the next time the president puts a false tweet out there. " In fact, Twitter should have been putting up these fact checks from the get go. Thanks, Maggie.
end edit.
~~~~~
