California Superior Court Judge Harold E. Kahn ruled on Thursday against Twitter’s petition to dismiss a lawsuit that white nationalist Jared Taylor filed after Twitter banned him from the social media platform.
Kahn ruled that Twitter did not violate Taylor’s First Amendment rights for permanently suspending his account in December, but instead that Twitter may have fraudulently advertised itself as a site that is devoted to free speech. Taylor’s complaint was “very eloquent” and that “it goes to the heart of free speech principles that long precede our constitution,” Khan said, according to a court transcript.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case, Taylor and his publishing company New Century Foundation, argue that the social media platform violated California law by removing Taylor’s account because they disagree with his viewpoints.
Twitter maintained its right to discriminate against any account in its argument and argued that part of the reason they suspended Taylor was because him and other white nationalists benefit by using Twitter to espouse their message.
“I think it reflects that this is a suit about these two plaintiffs with an enormous public stake in this case; they say that their whole enterprise of spewing … white — you know, white racism to the world depends on Twitter; that they built their enterprise around this,” said Patrick Carome, a lawyer representing Twitter, according to the court transcript.
Taylor, who was born in Japan, is an outspoken white nationalist and member of the alt-right who advocates for people of “European origin” to be allowed the right to be “left alone.” He completely rejects the “white supremacist” and “racist” labels, pointing to the supposed higher on average IQ’s of Asians compared to white people, Taylor said in a CNN interview in May 2017. (RELATED: Conservatives And The Alt Right Claim A Twitter Purge Is Occurring Just As The Company Is Being Sued)
Taylor’s opponents describe him as a racist for spouting the biological differences between the races while his supporters argue that the differences are based on sound science, as documented in social scientist Charles Murray’s book “The Bell Curve,” which is widely considered one of the most controversial books ever written.
Twitter has 30 days to respond to Taylor’s claim.
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