“The First Amendment bars censorship by the state,” Northwestern University law professor, Andrew Koppelman, told Yahoo Finance. “Media platforms are not the state. They are private companies. Trump’s lawyers know this perfectly well. The lawsuit is a frivolous stunt whose only purpose is to attract attention.”
In the three suits, which seek class action status, Trump claims members of Congress coerced the social media companies to remove his accounts in the wake of a deadly Jan. 6. attack on the U.S. Capitol that he’s accused of inciting. As such, the suits claim, the companies acted as agents of the government and therefore must be bound by free speech rules that govern state actors.
