Dispute over Tesla posts

Social media oversight: Musk rebuffed by the court

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has failed in his attempt to get rid of the controls imposed in 2018 on his social media posts about the electric car manufacturer before the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court dismissed his application on Monday without a hearing.

Musk had argued that the agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at the time violated his constitutional right to free speech. The SEC countered, among other things, that the waiver of fundamental rights to settle disputes is not unusual.

In 2018, the SEC had enforced that Musk should first have his posts on the short message service Twitter about Tesla, which could have an impact on the car manufacturer's share price, approved by the company. Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 and has since renamed the platform X. It is unclear how strictly he and Tesla will adhere to the guidelines. The tech billionaire has already failed in two court instances in his attempts to overturn the requirement.

The ruling was triggered by Musk's tweets from August 2018, when he wrote on Twitter that he was considering delisting Tesla from the stock exchange. "Financing secured", he added. This sentence later sparked a lot of controversy, as it turned out that there were no written commitments from investors. The SEC accused Musk of misleading investors and, in addition to supervising his tweets, also forced him to resign as chairman of the Tesla board of directors. In addition, Musk and Tesla each paid a fine of 20 million dollars.