U.S. District Judge Reed C. O'Connor initially told Media Matters to find the requested information and give X a log outlining which documents it wanted to withhold under privilege. When Media Matters refused to search for the information, he ordered the group to disclose the information.
Media Matters does not need to produce the information, at least for now, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said in the new ruling.
Being forced to hand over donor information implicates the First Amendment rights for the donors, and Media Matters is likely to succeed in its appeal, a three-judge panel said.
“We doubt that X Corp. needs the identity of Media Matters’s every donor, big or small, to advance its theories. Nor does it need the full residential addresses for any of those stated purposes. Conversely, Media Matters and its donors would bear a heavy burden if Media Matters had to release this information. It could enable others to harass or intimidate Media Matters or its donors,” U.S. Circuit Judges Jerry E. Smith, James E. Graves Jr., and Kurt D. Engelhardt wrote in their decision.
The judges noted that Musk has said X would “pursue” not only Media Matters “but anyone funding the organization.”
The judges stayed O‘Connor’s discovery order pending the outcome of Media Matters’s appeal of O’Connor’s separate ruling rejecting the group’s motion to dismiss. That appeal is still being considered by the Fifth Circuit.
The panel did question why Media Matters defied a judicial ruling.
“It is puzzling why Media Matters defied the district court. As that court explained, Media Matters ‘could have complied with the Order by, at a minimum, independently searching for the documents and creating a privilege log.’ In other words, it didn’t yet have to turn over the purportedly privileged documents. Does Media Matters think that the First Amendment excuses it from explaining why withheld discovery is privileged?” the judges wrote.
“Nonetheless, waiver or not, we don’t decide these ‘novel and far-reaching’ First Amendment issues in this ruling on the motion to stay, lest we ‘issu[e] unnecessary and potentially overbroad or misleading rulings,’” they added later.
Media Matters and a lawyer representing X did not respond to requests for comment.
