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The judge overseeing X's lawsuit against advertisers has recused himself after a news report showed he owned shares in Tesla.
In a notice of recusal dated Aug. 13, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas dropped the case against Xe v. World Federation of Advertisers, which he filed last week. The judge did not say why he was withdrawing from the case.
X, formerly known as Twitter, is owned by Elon Musk, who is also Tesla's CEO and largest shareholder. On Monday, NPR reported that O'Connor owned Tesla stock in 2022, the date of his last available disclosure, posing a potential conflict of interest.
Calls to the court clerk seeking comment were not immediately returned.
In the lawsuit filed by X, the company accused a number of advertisers of engaging in monopolistic behavior when they stopped advertising on the site. Among the companies named in the lawsuit are Unilever, Mars, CVS Healthcare and Orsted Europe.
In response to the lawsuit, WFA said it would suspend operations of its nonprofit initiative, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.
The new judge in charge of the case, Judge Ed Kincaid, issued an order Tuesday saying that any party will need to justify each request to the court to keep the files secret and out of public view.
O’Connor was a former aide to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and a former federal prosecutor in North Texas. He is currently the judge in another lawsuit X brought against Media Matters for America, which was filed in November after the progressive organization published a report about Nazi content running on the app alongside the companies’ ads.
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