Even Elon Musk Can't Tweet What He Wants?

One federal judge in New York District Court rejected Musk's bid to invalidate the more than four-year-old consent order in April 2022. However, the multihyphenate CEO's appeal was turned down on Monday. In the most recent decision, three additional judges rejected Musk's attempt to avoid SEC scrutiny and responsibility for his posts.

“We have considered Defendant-Appellant’s remaining arguments and find them to be without merit. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court,” the three-judge panel wrote in their Monday filing. In accordance with this ruling, Musk is still required to have a Tesla lawyer review certain content he wants to post online, or face potential investigation and consequences.

Which means even owning Twitter hasn’t freed Musk from legal restrictions on his tweets. Though he may be Twitter CEO (at least for the next few weeks until Linda Yaccarino presumably takes his place), Musk remains beholden to powers even beyond that of “Chief Twit.”

Can't Even Elon Musk tweet what he wants?

All of this started with a pretty foolish '420' tweet from 2018, which Tesla CEO Musk insisted had nothing to do with marijuana. "Am thinking about going private with Tesla at $420.

Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018

On August 7, 2018, he infamously tweeted, "Funding secured." However, it appears that neither the Tesla board nor the investors were made aware of the concept. Following a debacle, the SEC intervened, trading was paused, and the price of Tesla's stock surged. According to the examination conducted by the government inspector, no formal agreement to privatize Tesla was ever reached. Musk was charged with fraud by the SEC. The billionaire was had to retire as Tesla's chairman as part of a settlement, while he kept his position as CEO, and both he and the business were required to pay separate $20 million fines. Musk also agreed to a consent decree that would prevent him from saying anything that would materially affect the value of Tesla's stock. According to the agreement, Musk is required to have a business counsel examine any tweets he makes on Tesla operations before he posts them. Also Read: Following the online source code breach, Twitter is preparing The terms of the initial settlement are still in effect, despite the fact that Musk later prevailed in his securities fraud case earlier this year and a jury deemed him not accountable to investors for their losses.What were the judges' opinions? The federal appeals judges do not, however, believe that the second-richest man on Earth is being unjustly silenced, harassed, or denied freedom, according to the Monday decision. "We see no evidence to support Musk's contention that the SEC has used the consent decree to conduct bad-faith, harassing investigations of his protected speech," the panel stated. The SEC's power to enforce the deal Musk voluntarily signed is unaffected by the possibility that the consent decree "provide[d] broader relief than the court could have awarded after a trial." In essence, citizens are permitted to sign away part of their First Amendment rights through consent decrees. And when Musk accepted the terms of the SEC settlement, he did so knowingly. Musk had the option to litigate and defend against the [SEC's] accusations or to negotiate an alternative arrangement if he had intended to maintain his freedom to tweet about certain Tesla-related matters without even minor internal monitoring, but he opted not to do so.