Meta has settled a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump after the social media giant suspended him from their Facebook and Instagram platforms following the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
As part of the agreement, Meta will pay $25 million, including about $22 million to Trump’s presidential library and the remainder going to legal fees and other plaintiffs who were part of the litigation. A Meta spokesman confirmed the settlement, first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
“I write to inform the Court that the parties have reached an agreement to settle the named plaintiffs’ individual claims and resolve this matter. The parties will file a joint stipulation of dismissal with prejudice in the coming days,” K. Winn Allen, attorney for Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, wrote in a filing to the federal judge overseeing the case in San Francisco.
Trump’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump and other defendants filed the lawsuit in 2021, claiming that they were the victims of “impermissible censorship” on the part of the platform. It claimed a violation of the First Amendment, claiming that Meta was “acting in concert with federal officials,” including officials at the Centers for Disease Control and members of Joe Biden’s transition team. The lawsuit claims that Trump’s First Amendment rights were violated because Facebook acted as a public forum.
In its response, Meta noted that the First Amendment prohibited the government — not a private party — from abridging speech.
The company’s attorneys wrote in 2022, “Meta and its CEO are private parties. While some private parties may be treated as state actors in limited circumstances, numerous courts—including at least a dozen in this District—have held that Meta and companies like it are not state actors for First Amendment purposes. Plaintiffs do not identify any novel theory for why this case should turn out differently. Instead, they present the same arguments that courts have rejected repeatedly.”
More to come.
