"It's a Tweet with a Filing Fee, Not a Lawsuit"

A funny line from a commenter.

It was said by our commenter ah…Clem about Donald Trump's lawsuits against the social media platforms, but it's generalizable to any lawsuits brought by prolific tweeters (and maybe to other lawsuits, too). [UPDATE: ah…Clem reports that credit should go to Mike Dunford on Twitter, but now that I've searched for it on Twitter, I see an earlier version on Nov. 5, 2020, from @AriannaEditrix.]

As it happens, I think that Trump's lawsuits have a kernel of a plausible legal theory, for reasons I discussed in my "When Government Urges Private Entities to Restrict Others' Speech" post: If the government pressured social media companies to block Trump using sufficiently coercive pressure, then the blocking might involve state action and might thus violate the First Amendment, though I'm skeptical that the allegations in the lawsuit cross that (vaguely defined) boundary. But in any event, I liked the commenter's line.