Texas Judge Steps Down in Elon Musk’s X Case Against Advertisers: NPR

U.S. Federal Judge Reed O’Connor has been an active member of the Federalist Society for a long time. In 2018, he spoke at a panel discussion at the Texas Chapters’ annual conference.

Federalist Society/Screenshot from NPR

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Federalist Society/Screenshot from NPR

A US District Court judge in Texas has recused himself from a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk’s X company. After days NPR highlighted the judge’s investment in Tesla and questions about Musk’s use of the courtroom to engage in “forum shopping.”

But O’Connor, according to Latest publicly available financial disclosureMusk also has an investment in Unilever, one of the defendants in Musk’s lawsuit against a coalition of brands, and the judge ruled that he received $15,000 or less in dividends from the company in 2022.

In O’Connor two sentence order Beyond the Musk case, he offered no explanation.

Last week, Musk filed a lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies CVS, Orsted, Unilever and Mars, saying the matter would be heard by another federal judge in North Texas, without further elaborating on the decision.

The lawsuit alleged that the brands illegally conspired against X to deprive the company of advertising revenue. Court records show the case has been reassigned to U.S. District Judge Kincaid.

According to O’Connor’s Latest publicly available financial disclosuresMusk owns up to $50,000 worth of shares in Tesla, the electric car company he owns, and he also invests in and benefits from Unilever, raising questions about the judge’s ability to preside over the advertiser’s case impartially.

This is the second lawsuit Musk has filed against a critic in Fort Worth-based O’Connor Court, though neither party is a Texas resident.

In November, Musk’s company X sued watchdog group Media Matters over reports the group released highlighting white nationalist content appearing next to brands advertising on the platform.

In that case, O’Connor ruled sweepingly in Musk’s favor, including giving Musk’s lawyers broad latitude to request hundreds of pages of documents from the nonprofit, a process known as legal discovery.

The order was approved before O’Connor ruled on whether Musk’s case against Media Matters had any merit.

For five months, Media Matters has been waiting for O’Connor to rule on its motion to dismiss, typically the first legal hurdle a lawsuit must clear before moving forward. The motion has yet to be heard. In the meantime, the nonprofit has spent millions of dollars complying with document requests that its lawyers have likened to “harassment.”

O’Connor’s stepping down from the advertiser’s case comes after reports that Musk’s lawsuit has already begun to put pressure on one of the key players in the case.

The brand safety initiative, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, known as GARM, announced it would cease operations in response to Musk’s lawsuit.

Garm is managed by the World Federation of Advertisers, which Musk has sued. In a statement, the federation said Musk’s legal action “has been a significant distraction and drain on its resources and finances.”

The coalition was founded in the wake of a livestreamed video on Facebook in 2019 of a mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. The effort was a way to make social media advertising more transparent and provide a collective voice to stand up against violent and extremist content on the platforms.