Media watchdog withdraws its suit against X

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A nonprofit media watchdog and the social media giant X filed to dismiss the current cases between the two entities Thursday, after a year of litigation that at one point made it to the Ninth Circuit in December.

The joint stipulation for dismissal was filed in the U.S. Northern District of California federal court with U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria presiding over Media Matters’ initial suit. The stipulation dismisses the plaintiffs’ claims against defendants X Corp., X Internet Unlimited Company and X Asia Pacific Internet Pte Ltd. with prejudice.

It also stated the dismissal is without prejudice for the nonprofit to seek relief “for any future lawsuits filed by X. Corp. and related entities,” and each side would pay their own legal fees.

Media Matters sued X in San Francisco in March 2025 to force the company to litigate its defamation claims against the nonprofit in that jurisdiction, per the forum selection clause of its terms of service, and not in different courts around the world.

The first of these lawsuits, filed in Texas, came after X Chairman Elon Musk threatened a “thermonuclear lawsuit” over the watchdog’s reports that ads for well-known companies such as IBM and NBCUniversal appeared next to white nationalist hashtags on X’s site.

Media Matters, according to X, knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X beside neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform.

X’s international corporate entities then followed up with similar lawsuits in Ireland and Singapore and threatened to also bring a case in the United Kingdom.

In July 2025, Chhabria, a Barack Obama appointee, rejected X’s bid to strike Media Matters’ claims that pertained to the similar lawsuits X filed in Ireland and Singapore because, he said, those lawsuits were clearly not protected activity under the California anti-SLAPP statute.

In a third July ruling, Chhabria denied X’s request to stay the lawsuit while it appealed a preliminary injunction he had issued in April that ordered X not to pursue its ongoing lawsuit against Media Matters in Ireland or to begin filing an additional lawsuit in the UK. The preliminary injunction didn’t stay the Singapore case since it was already well advanced.

In November, a Ninth Circuit three-judge panel heard oral arguments on X’s appeal.

X’s appeal attorney Paul Clement said the lower court’s decision to allow Media Matters to bring up the forum clause after many months of legal proceedings, including affidavits and declarations from legal experts, was erroneous, and it was impossible to get all litigation back to one forum.

On Dec. 19, the panel found X could proceed with its international litigation against Media Matters, reversing the lower court’s anti-suit injunction.

“Media Matters had knowledge of X’s terms of service from the beginning of the Ireland litigation (and cited them in its briefs for other jurisdictional defenses before the Irish court), so it had all the information it needed to defend its rights. Yet instead of invoking the forum selection clause, Media Matters litigated in Ireland for over a year before it raised the issue for the first time in this action,” the panel said in the seven-page order.

Thursday’s joint stipulation for dismissal terminated Media Matters’ federal case.

Attorneys for both parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment.