Elon Musk’s Appeal to Remove ‘Twitter Sitter’ Rejected by Supreme Court
Musk was legally mandated to have a lawyer pre-approve his tweets.
Back in 2018, Elon Musk entered an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after posting tweets to Tesla’s Twitter account that were proven to be fraudulent.
In the tweet, which still lives on X today, Musk famously claimed that he was readying to take X private at $420 USD and had “funding secured.”
Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018
To avoid penalties, Musk struck a settlement agreement with the SEC that would see him pay a $20 million USD fine and would require a company lawyer to pre-approve every post before it goes live on Tesla’s social media accounts, a person who’s been dubbed the “Twitter sitter.” The lawyer also was tasked with approving posts from Musk’s personal account that mentioned Tesla.
Since then, Musk has acquired Twitter, renamed it to X and submitted an appeal in December asking a federal court to do away with the Twitter sitter requirement. After the federal appeals court rejected Musk’s request, the issue was brought before the Supreme Court.
Musk’s lawyers argued that the settlement violated the First Amendment – the right to free speech – but the Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear the case, meaning Musk will continue to submit his tweets for approval.
