Texas secessionists drop lawsuit over social media gag order

The Texas Nationalist Movement has dropped a lawsuit against Meta, owner of social media giant Facebook, which said the platform restricted posts containing links to one of the group’s websites.

Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, said on his show “Late Night Coffee Talk: Live TEXIT Q&A,” which aired on Facebook and YouTube on August 28, that he decided to drop the lawsuit because of the cost and because the case had been moved to federal court in California.

The secessionist organization filed the lawsuit after saying Facebook blocked some posts from its website TEXITnow.net in violation of Chapter 143A of the Texas Code of Civil Practice and Remedies, which states that a social media platform “may not censor a user, a user’s expression, or a user’s ability to receive another person’s expression” based on the user’s viewpoint or “their geographic location within this state.”

During his show, Miller responded to a viewer’s message asking whether TNM’s case would be affected by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent statement that the government had “pressured” his platform to censor content during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We ultimately withdrew our complaint,” Miller responded, adding: “Ultimately it came down to two things. The first was money. I’m not criticizing anyone, but we’re just not getting the contributions that are needed for the Texit defense effort to do this kind of thing.”

“As we go into the next legislative session, we have to make serious choices about how we’re going to spend money and how we’re going to raise it, and frankly everybody’s angry,” he said, adding: “Lawyers cost money. They’re not cheap, and good lawyers cost more.”

Miller continued: “The second thing, which really made the first one worse, was the fact that the case was transferred to San Francisco. Meta was able to get the case transferred to federal court and get the case transferred from federal court in Texas to federal court in San Francisco.”

“Think about the logic of this,” he said. “We filed a lawsuit under a Texas law, and it was sent to a San Francisco court. Are we going to get justice there? Probably not.”

Miller blamed the move to California on a loophole in the original law that allowed “a Mack truck to drive by.” He added that even if that loophole was eventually closed, it was too late for the group’s lawsuit against Meta.

Newsweek I reached out to Meta and Daniel Miller for comment via email and X direct message, respectively, outside of normal business hours.

In May, Texas nationalists scored a major victory when supporters of a Texas independence referendum were elected chairman and vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party. The following month, the Texas Republican Party included holding an independence referendum in its 2024 platform and legislative priorities document.

A survey conducted exclusively for Newsweek Earlier this year, a study found that in a hypothetical referendum, 23% of Texans would vote for the state to become “an independent country,” while 67% would favor remaining “a state within the United States.”