Meta's Forum Selection Clause Not Applicable to 1st Amendment Case: Plaintiffs
Plaintiffs Wise Guys and Wise Guys II filed motions Monday for leave to file a sur-reply to Meta’s reply in support of a motion to transfer and another to Meta’s support of a motion to dismiss a freedom of speech…
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suit “to correct several misstatements and distortions of facts,” said the filing (docket 3:23-cv-00217) in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Dallas. Plaintiffs alleged in a January complaint that Meta engaged in “viewpoint discrimination” (see (Ref:2303210041]), particularly on COVID-19 vaccine information. In a May 1 reply in support of plaintiffs’ motion to transfer the case, Meta said, “Little about the transfer is in dispute,” saying plaintiffs didn’t deny that Meta’s forum-selection clause is “mandatory and applicable.” In their sur-reply, plaintiffs said “to the contrary,” they have repeatedly maintained that Meta’s forum selection clause is neither mandatory not applicable to their complaint. If Meta’s motion to transfer were granted, it would adversely affect plaintiffs’ right to have the case decided under Texas House Bill 20 (HB 20), section 143A, which states a social media platform “may not censor a user, a user’s expression, or a user’s ability to receive the expression of another person” based on viewpoint or geographic location. Meta conceded its motion to transfer would “subvert the application of HB 20 to this dispute,” plaintiffs said. Meta “attacks Plaintiffs for filing the lawsuit in violation of the forum selection clause in its terms of service,” they said, but it didn’t note “its controlling authority presupposes a ‘contractually valid forum selection clause.'" A forum selection clause should be considered unreasonable if its enforcement would contravene a strong public policy of the forum state, they said, saying HB 20 “is just such a statute.”