Elon Musk may soon own Twitter, but that doesn’t mean he can tweet whatever he wants about Tesla.
So declared a federal judge Wednesday, who determined that — despite the billionaire’s plea — Musk cannot simply get out of a previously agreed to 2018 settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission merely because he feels like it. That agreement, which required Musk to pay a $20 million settlement and step down from his role as Tesla’s chairman for a period of three years, followed an extremely ill-considered 2018 “funding secured” tweet from Musk, and included a provision that any tweet by the Tesla CEO concerning his car company get pre-approved by Tesla’s lawyers.
“Musk, by entering into the consent decree in 2018, agreed to the provision requiring the pre-approval of any such written communications that contain, or reasonably could contain, information material to Tesla or its shareholders,” wrote U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in part. “He cannot now complain that this provision violates his First Amendment rights.”
Musk’s lawyers first asked the courts for a hearing on this issue back in early March, and Wednesday’s ruling is the result of that. Things, clearly, did not go as hoped for Musk.
Even so, it’s unclear if the latest ruling will have any discernible impact on Musk’s Twitter habit. Time and time again, since 2018, Musk has repeatedly tweeted about Tesla.
His pending acquisition of Twitter is unlikely to dampen that habit.
