Supreme Court justices parse US antiterrorism law in Twitter case
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday from Twitter, the US government and the family of a Jordanian citizen killed in a 2017 terrorist attack, in a case that will decide whether the social media platform can be held liable for the actions of those who use its services.
Much of the hearing was devoted to a careful parsing of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), the law under which the Tammneh family brought their lawsuit. Their argument, essentially, is that Twitter is liable for providing a platform to terrorists who used it to communicate and plan the attack. Twitter, for its part, argued that it couldn’t be held responsible without a demonstration that it had been informed of a specific attack and failed to do anything about it.