Musk steers X disputes to conservative Texas courts in service terms update

Elon Musk’s X has updated its terms of service to steer any disputes from users of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter to a federal court in Texas whose judges frequently deliver victories to conservative litigants in political cases.

New terms of service that will take effect on 15 November specify that any lawsuits against X by users must be exclusively filed in the US district court for the northern district of Texas or state courts in Tarrant county, Texas.

It is common for companies to include venue clauses in their terms of service specifying which forum would hear any disputes filed against them. But the choice of the northern district of Texas stands out because X is not located in the district.

Following a move from San Francisco, X is headquartered in Bastrop, Texas, near Austin, whose federal court is in Texas’s western district. That district has far fewer Republican-appointed judges than the northern district, which has become a favored destination for conservative activists and business groups to pursue lawsuits seeking to block parts of Joe Biden’s agenda, a tactic Democratic lawmakers say smacks of “judge-shopping”.

“It’s hard to imagine that’s unrelated to this new language,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University.

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