Elon Musk’s X updated its terms of service to steer user lawsuits to US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the same court where a judge who bought Tesla stock is overseeing an X lawsuit against the nonprofit Media Matters for America.
The new terms that apply to users of the X social network say that all disputes related to the terms “will be brought exclusively in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas or state courts located in Tarrant County, Texas, United States, and you consent to personal jurisdiction in those forums and waive any objection as to inconvenient forum.”
X recently moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Texas, but the new headquarters are not in the Northern District or Tarrant County. X’s headquarters are in Bastrop, the county seat of Bastrop County, which is served by US District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Now that Elmo is the First Lady, this is the best TOS that’s ever been written by anyone ever. It’s perfect. It probably trumps the constitution because of how perfect it is.
Terms requiring users to sue in specific courts are usually enforceable, Vanderbilt Law School Professor Brian Fitzpatrick told Ars today. “There might be an argument that there was no consent to the new terms, but if you have to click on something at some point acknowledging you read the new terms, consent will probably be found,” he told us in an email.
A user attempting to sue X in a different state or district probably wouldn’t get very far. “If a suit was filed in the wrong court, it would be dismissed (if filed in state court) or transferred (if filed in federal court),” Fitzpatrick said.
It seems insane to me that the US system lets you literally specify the exact judge (that you’ve already bought and paid for) as the only judge that can hear cases against you. And that the system is basically OK with this.
Any lawsuits have to be brought in the country in which the citizen bringing the suit lives. So if I wanted to sue Twitter I literally would have to do them where I live. There is no way for me to sue them in Texas since I’m not a citizen of Texas or the US.
And changed the twitter ToS to require suits in a specific part of texas.
How likely is that chunk to be thrown out for being obviously ridiculous?
In a past life, pretty plausible.
Now that Elmo is the First Lady, this is the best TOS that’s ever been written by anyone ever. It’s perfect. It probably trumps the constitution because of how perfect it is.
According to the article, not that likely:
It seems insane to me that the US system lets you literally specify the exact judge (that you’ve already bought and paid for) as the only judge that can hear cases against you. And that the system is basically OK with this.
Amazing how terms of service apparently carry the same weight as laws, yet can be changed arbitrarily by businesses on a whim.
It also wouldn’t fly in the EU anyway.
Any lawsuits have to be brought in the country in which the citizen bringing the suit lives. So if I wanted to sue Twitter I literally would have to do them where I live. There is no way for me to sue them in Texas since I’m not a citizen of Texas or the US.