The Federal Trade Commission will continue to be prohibited from enforcing a civil investigative demand on the progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America, after a federal judge rejected the government’s effort to put her prior ruling on hold.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ruled that the FTC was likely engaged in retaliatory conduct in violation of the First Amendment as it sought to launch an investigation of Media Matters.
The FTC sought a stay of the ruling pending appeal. But in a decision on Friday, Sooknanan wrote that the FTC had “not established that issuance of a stay would not substantially injure Media Matters or otherwise harm the public interest.”
“Staying the Court’s injunction for the very purpose of permitting the Government to continue an unlawful investigation into an organization engaged in constitutionally protected speech would undoubtedly cause irreparable injury,” she wrote.
In her ruling last week, the judge wrote that it “should alarm all Americans when the Government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate. And that alarm should ring even louder when the Government retaliates against those engaged in newsgathering and reporting.”
Earlier this year, the FTC issued the investigative demand as part of a probe of an advertising boycott of Elon Musk‘s X. Media Matters has been a target of Musk, members of the Trump administration and their allies after the group published a piece in 2023 on antisemitic posts on X that appeared next to advertisements from major brands. A number of companies pulled their advertisements from the platform, leading Musk to filed what he called a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters.
In seeking a stay, the FTC argued that the judge’s ruling “impedes the FTC’s ongoing investigation by preventing it from determining whether Media Matters has any responsive information relevant to the investigation into advertiser boycotts that would violate the antitrust laws.”
The FTC is now made up entirely of Republicans, after Trump ousted the two Democrats on the commission.
