By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – Elon Musk’s X has updated its terms of service to steer any disputes by users of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter to a federal court in Texas whose judges frequently deliver victories to conservative litigants in political cases.
New terms of service that will take effect on Nov. 15 specify that any lawsuits against X by users must be exclusively filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas or state courts in Tarrant County, Texas.
It is common for companies to include venue clauses in their terms of service directing what forum would hear any disputes filed against them. But the choice of the Northern District of Texas stands out because X is not even located in the district.
Following a move from San Francisco, X is today headquartered in Bastrop, Texas, near Austin, whose federal court is in Texas’ Western District. The Western District has far fewer Republican-appointed judges than the Northern District.
The Northern District has become a favored destination for conservative activists and business groups to pursue lawsuits seeking to block parts of Democratic President Joe Biden’s agenda, a tactic Democratic lawmakers say smacks of “judge-shopping.”
“It’s hard to imagine that’s unrelated to this new language,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University.
X did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk, the world’s richest man, has increasingly embraced conservative causes and has become a major financial supporter of Republican former President Donald Trump in his campaign to win the Nov. 5 presidential election.
Texas’ Northern District already is the host of two lawsuits X has filed after several brands pulled ads from Musk’s platform, including one against liberal watchdog group Media Matters after it published a report that said ads appeared next to posts supporting Nazism.
X, which billionaire Musk bought in 2022, sued Media Matters last year, alleging the group defamed the platform. The lawsuit is set for trial in Fort Worth, Texas, next year. Media Matters has called the lawsuit meritless.
X has also filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing several advertisers of conspiring to stage a boycott, causing it to lose revenue.
Both of X’s lawsuits were initially assigned to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, a Fort Worth judge who once declared the Obamacare health insurance law unconstitutional in a ruling that was later overturned. He has since blocked Biden administration policies on gun control and LGBTQ rights.
The judge, an appointee of Republican former President George W. Bush, stepped aside from X’s antitrust case in August after National Public Radio reported that financial disclosure reports showed O’Connor had owned shares of another Musk company, Tesla.
But the judge has declined to recuse himself from the Media Matters case.
O’Connor is one of two active judges in Fort Worth’s federal courthouse. The other is Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Matthew Lewis)
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