Elon Musk Buys Twitter – The Radical Left Panics Over Free Speech

Today could mark a significant stride towards restoring free speech – a principle that this country was founded on. Twitter has reportedly reached a deal to sell its platform to Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who has expressed his intent to reform Twitter as the “platform for free speech around the globe.”

ACLJ Director of Policy Harry Hutchison explained how Musk will likely work with shareholders to replace the Board of Directors to make these changes:

The members of the Board of Directors owe fiduciary duties to shareholders. They can include the fiduciary duty of loyalty and care. So, if they are seen as putting their own interests ahead of the interests of the shareholders, that constitutes a violation of their fiduciary duty and that then exposes them to a shareholder derivative suit. I suspect as well that members of the Board of Directors owe a fiduciary duty of care. It’s very difficult to successfully bring a case against the board with respect to a violation of duty of care. . . . But it is suffice to say that Twitter is incorporated under Delaware general corporate law, the shareholders under Delaware general corporate law own the company. However, the board of directors, each of whom is appointed by the shareholders, they manage, and they really control the corporation and then the company is managed day-to-day by officers. So, members of the Board of Directors, they have the right to fire officers. But if we want to replace members of the Board of Directors, this will generally require a shareholder vote. . . Shareholders can vote by signing consent documents.

The whole point of Elon’s effort to buy Twitter is to protect free speech. The First Amendment is not only being threatened in the corporate world, but also at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held oral argument today regarding a coach that quietly prayed on the 50-yard line after football games and was fired for it.

Our friend Paul Clement, who argued this case at the Supreme Court, explained how this religious expression is protected: 

When Coach Kennedy took a knee at midfield after games to say a brief prayer of thanks, his expression was entirely his own. That private religious expression was doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses. When the School District fired him for that fleeting religious exercise out of endorsement concerns, it not only violated the First Amendment, but it ignored a veritable wall of this Court’s precedents that make clear that a school does not endorse private religious speech just because it fails to censure it.

We filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in this case and we actually helped establish precedent in 1990 for this case. In Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens – a case we argued – the Court concluded:

There is a crucial difference between government and private speech endorsing religion, and, as Congress recognized in passing the Act, high school students are mature enough and are likely to understand that a school does not endorse or support student speech that it merely permits on a nondiscriminatory basis.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court makes the same conclusion today. ACLJ Senior Counsel for Global Affairs and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained what the Left’s fear is in allowing both sides of freedom of speech:

It shows their real fear. Their real fear is not all of the different voices, it is that when our voice is heard in every place, whether that’s on Twitter, whether that is at a football game, whether that is in our churches, they know our arguments resonate with huge portions of the American people. Our ideas about our nation, our ideas that America is an exceptional country, our ideas that we are not racist nation, those ideas that frighten them, so they resort to censorship. And we have seen that in a myriad of ways. . . Any conservative voice in America has suffered some form of censorship. . . . Not only will the Supreme Court decision go in a way that will create more opportunities for speech, but I hope every social media platform – including Twitter – will let all voices be heard.

Sec. Pompeo compared today’s two issues regarding free speech:

The First Amendment covers them both. One says you have the right to exercise your religion in the way that you chose – that’s what that football coach was doing. By the way, doing it in a very rational way, very calm way, expressing his own personal viewpoint. Then you have this huge public marketplace that has taken voices from one viewpoint and driven them out. . . . We want all of these voices to be heard. If Elon Musk gets this, I hope that every leftist, communist, socialist voice gets heard too. Bring it. Let’s have this debate, let’s have this argument. Let’s let all the voices be heard. Let them fact check our stories, let them try to gaslight us. I think the American people can see. . . This is what they fear, that we will go into this medium and we will speak the truth and the world will come to see it as the truth, and their ideas will be rejected in the places that matter most, in our families, in our churches, and in our central institutions. I hope the Supreme Court gets this right. And I hope that Twitter permits all voices to be heard and that every platform will realize this is to their benefit and they will follow suit as well. We don’t have to have a hostile takeover to get free speech.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more in-depth analysis of Elon Musk buying Twitter and the major prayer case at the Supreme Court.

Watch the full broadcast below: