Mother Jones; Marc Piasecki/Getty
If you have a problem with X, you could be forced to take it up with Elon Musk’s favorite judge. Starting November 15, the platform’s terms of service will require all litigation to be filed in the Northern District of Texas. It just so happens that this is where Federal Judge Reed O’Connor, who has a financial stake in Musk’s car company, Tesla, hears cases.
Wow: Twitter’s new ToS says all disputes will be heard in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas located in Tarrant County (Tesla investor Reed O’Connor’s court)
Truly remarkable, considering Twitter’s new HQ is NOT in this district, but in western Texas. pic.twitter.com/IoJgrVgytq
— Bobby Allyn (@BobbyAllyn) October 17, 2024
The Northern District of Texas, filled with GOP-appointed judges with a history of precedent-busting far-right opinions, is a magnet for rightwing litigants. Conservative groups from around the country flock to Texas courthouses to challenge Biden administration rules. Some have relocated in order to bring suits there, and brand new legal groups spring into existence there.
Even before attention fell on X’s new terms, Musk had established himself as one of these forum-shoppers. Musk is currently suing the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters in O’Connor’s Fort Worth courtroom. After taking the case and making several rulings favorable to Musk, financial disclosures showed that O’Connor has a stake in Tesla, part of Musk’s business empire. O’Connor has refused to recuse himself, arguing that the case about X does not bear on the stock price of Tesla. However, it is not clear if that is true, since Musk’s personal reputation affects the value of all his companies.
O’Connor is a particularly far-right judge, who has shown a willingness to issue far reaching-rulings. To take a few examples, he has ruled that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional (and attempted to invalidate some of its key protections), he found the Indian Child Welfare Act unconstitutional, he blocked protections for LGBT students, greenlit anti-LGBT discrimination by religious employers, and invalidated a Biden administration rule banning so-called ghost guns, which is now before the US Supreme Court.
On X, Georgetown Law professor Stephen Vladeck noted that O’Connor might not catch all such cases filed against X: “I *don’t* read these terms to mean that every case will end up before Judge O’Connor, specifically. The only place in the Northern District where you’re guaranteed to draw O’Connor is Wichita Falls. Elsewhere in the district, you could draw other judges.”
But Musk is probably okay with that. Musk, a pro-Trump donor who has used X to push Republican talking points, is probably popular among other GOP-appointed Northern District of Texas federal judges such as Mark Pittman, who struck down Biden’s original student loan forgiveness plan, or Matthew Kacsmaryk, who tried to take the abortion drug mifepristone off the market.
X did not respond to a request for comment.