DALLAS (LN) — Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor on Wednesday largely sided with X Corp. in a pair of dueling discovery motions against Media Matters for America, ordering the organization to hand over internal documents on advertising brand safety standards and staffing records while deferring a potentially precedent-setting question about whether the Stored Communications Act even applies to social media posts.
The ruling comes in X's lawsuit accusing Media Matters, its president Angelo Carusone, and reporter Eric Hananoki of knowingly fabricating side-by-side images showing major advertisers' posts on the X platform appearing next to neo-Nazi and other extremist content, then presenting those images as representative of what ordinary users see — a campaign X says was designed to drive away advertisers and destroy the platform's business.
O'Connor granted X's motion to compel in full, overruling Media Matters' objections to three document requests. The most contested was RFP No. 108, which sought records of the organization's internal research into online advertising brand safety standards. Media Matters had resisted on First Amendment and Texas Press Shield grounds, arguing its investigative materials and internal discussions were privileged.
The judge was skeptical. O'Connor noted that Media Matters had raised the First Amendment and press-shield objections for the first time in its response to the motion to compel — not in its original responses and objections — which led him to question the sincerity of these objections. He declined to rule on the validity of those privileges but ordered Media Matters to produce all nonprivileged responsive documents and log any claimed privileged materials by May 22, 2026.
X had argued that if Media Matters knew the platform met industry brand safety standards yet published its articles anyway, that would be obvious evidence of falsity and malice — a key element of its business disparagement claim. O'Connor agreed the request cleared the relevance bar.
On Media Matters' own motion to compel, the court's most consequential move was a deferral on RFP No. 79, which sought all content posted to certain user accounts — including posts that were later removed or suspended — from November 2022 to the present. X blocked the request under the Stored Communications Act, arguing the statute bars disclosure of stored electronic communications. Media Matters countered that two SCA exceptions applied and, for the first time in its reply brief, argued the SCA does not cover social media posts at all.
O'Connor refused to reach that argument — calling it waived for being raised only in reply — but acknowledged the underlying question is unsettled enough to warrant dedicated briefing. He ordered the parties to address whether X qualifies as an electronic communication service or a remote computing service under the SCA, how the statute applies to social media posts as opposed to email or closed-end messaging, and what Congress intended by the consent and service-protection exceptions in sections 2702(b)(3) and (b)(5). X must file an opening brief by May 4, Media Matters responds by May 11, and X replies by May 18.
The court also ordered X to produce documents on creator monetization and revenue sharing, but only for the 15 user accounts that Media Matters actually featured in its reporting — rejecting a broader sweep as overbroad. And it ordered X to turn over documents relating to advertising losses allegedly caused by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League, and other organizations, finding Media Matters is entitled to build its defense that it was not the cause of X's advertiser exodus.
X's claims that it has no documents tracking advertising revenue at the granularity Media Matters requested, and no documents setting forth content filters for new accounts, were accepted at face value after X submitted declarations from its Global Brand Safety Lead attesting to reasonable searches that turned up nothing.
The SCA briefing schedule means the question of whether a social media platform can invoke a federal electronic privacy statute to block discovery of its own users' deleted public posts will be fully joined before the end of May — a question no court appears to have squarely resolved.