Supreme Court rejects appeal
Musk can’t get rid of Tesla’s muzzle
April 29, 2024, 7:17 p.m
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After price turbulence, Tesla boss Musk has had to have all posts about his own company approved since 2018. He is trying to get rid of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s muzzle through several instances. Now he is failing before the Supreme Court.
Tesla boss Elon Musk has failed in his attempt to get rid of the controls on his social media posts about the electric car manufacturer that have been mandatory since 2018 before the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court dismissed his petition without a hearing. Musk had argued that the agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission at the time violated his constitutional right to free speech. The SEC countered, among other things, that the waiver of fundamental rights to resolve disputes was not unusual.
In 2018, the SEC enforced that Musk should first have the company approve his contributions to the short message service Twitter about Tesla, which could have an impact on the car manufacturer’s share price. It is unclear how strictly he and Tesla adhere to the requirement. The tech billionaire has already failed in two court attempts to overturn the requirement.
Proceedings also because of Twitter takeover
The trigger for the regulation were Musk’s tweets from August 2018. Musk wrote on Twitter at the time that he was considering delisting Tesla from the stock exchange. “Funding 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.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission is also breathing down Musk’s neck because of his Twitter takeover. The tech billionaire completed the purchase of the online service at the end of October 2022 and has since renamed the platform to X. He had been quietly buying Twitter shares on a large scale since the beginning of the year. The SEC has been investigating the deal since spring 2022. The stock exchange regulator accuses Musk, among other things, of delaying reporting the amount of his share package.