Musk tells judge that gag order would “trample” on his First Amendment rights

Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at gigafactory opening party in Austin, Texas, on April 7, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Suzanne Cordeiro)

On Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk urged a judge to reject a request for a gag order that would prevent him from continuing to publicly claim that his infamous “Funding secured” tweet was accurate.

The motion for a temporary restraining order “asks this Court to trample on Elon Musk’s First Amendment rights by barring him from publicly discussing this case or its underlying facts. Plaintiff’s motion cannot be reconciled with the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech and should be denied,” Musk’s lawyer wrote in a court filing Wednesday.

Musk and Tesla face a class action lawsuit in US District Court for the Northern District of California over Musk’s August 2018 claim that he had secured funding to take Tesla private. Musk and Tesla previously agreed to pay $20 million each in penalties and impose controls on Musk’s social media statements to settle a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which said that “Musk’s misleading tweets” about taking Tesla private caused the stock price to jump “and led to significant market disruption.”