Rutenburg v. Twitter, Inc.

• Court: District Court, N.D. California
• Decided: January 28, 2021
• Docket: 4:21-cv-00548
• Status: Unknown

Opinion

1 2 3 4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 5 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 7 MARIA RUTENBURG, Case No. 4:21-cv-00548-YGR

8 Plaintiff, ORDER: (1) DENYING MOTION FOR 9 v. TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER; AND (2) DENYING AS MOOT MOTION 10 TWITTER, INC., TO SHORTEN TIME 11 Defendant. Re: Dkt. Nos. 9, 10

12 13 Having reviewed the motion for temporary restraining order filed by plaintiff Maria 14 Rutenburg, the motion for a temporary restraining order is DENIED. A fundamental flaw in 15 Rutenburg’s entire case is that the claimed rights under the First Amendment (and the corollary 16 claims under the Fourteenth Amendment) cannot be enforced against a private entity such as 17 defendant Twitter, Inc. See Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S.Ct. 1921, 1928 18 (2019) (“The text and original meaning of those Amendments, as well as this Court's longstanding 19 precedents, establish that the Free Speech Clause prohibits only governmental abridgment of 20 speech. The Free Speech Clause does not prohibit private abridgment of speech.” (emphasis in 21 original)); Belgau v. Inslee, 975 F.3d 940, 946 (9th Cir. 2020) (“The Supreme Court has long held 22 that ‘merely private conduct, however discriminatory or wrongful,’ falls outside the purview of the 23 Fourteenth Amendment.” (citing Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1002, 102 S.Ct. 2777, 73 24 L.Ed.2d 534 (1982))); Roberts v. AT&T Mobility LLC, 877 F.3d 833, 837 (9th Cir. 2017) (“A 25 threshold requirement of any constitutional claim is the presence of state action. . . . Because the 26 First Amendment right to petition is a guarantee only against abridgment by [the] government, . . . 27 state action is a necessary threshold which [a plaintiff] must cross before we can even consider 1 citations and quotation marks omitted)); Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 157 (1978) 2 (“While as a factual matter any person with sufficient physical power may deprive a person of his 3 property, only a State or a private person whose action may be fairly treated as that of the State 4 || itself... deprive him of an interest encompassed within the Fourteenth Amendment's 5 protection ....” (internal citations and quotation marks omitted)). Further, Rutenburg failed to 6 || comply with the Court’s local rules and effectuate service, and accordingly, the motion is 7 procedurally defective. See, e.g., Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(1). 8 Moreover, in light of the foregoing, Rutenburg’s ex parte motion to shorten the briefing 9 schedule on the motion for temporary restraining order is DENIED AS MOOT. 10 This Order terminates Docket Numbers 9 and 10. 11 IT Is SO ORDERED. «(12 || Dated: January 28, 2021

YVONNE GONZALEZ ROGER 15 UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE 16

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