The Satanic Temple has filed legal papers with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination alleging that Twitter has engaged in a pattern of discriminatory actions against the organization, according to a press release issued Wednesday.
The complaint asserts that Twitter refused to take action against an individual who called for setting fire to The Satanic Temple headquarters and instead, without any justification, suspended both the accounts of TST and TST’s spokesperson and co-founder, Lucien Greaves.
“The failure of Twitter to verify both accounts, which both clearly meet Twitter’s documented standards for verification, compounded by the suspension of the accounts clearly demonstrates a pattern of hostile discriminatory behavior engaged in by Twitter against The Satanic Temple,” Greaves said in a statement. “It reveals the biased human agency behind a facade of neutral and evenly enforced standards.”
The complaint charges Twitter with discrimination in a public accommodation on the basis of religion and unlawful retaliation.
“Given the importance of social media platforms, and the outsized power that so few social media giants like Twitter hold over a users’ community and business presences, these platforms should reasonably be expected to responsibly and evenly uphold their Terms of Service in a non-biased fashion free of discrimination and inexplicable arbitrary pettiness,” Greaves said. “To ignore Twitter’s blatant discrimination against The Satanic Temple is to yield ourselves to regressive new world of acceptable online violations against Civil Liberties.”
TST is being represented by the Randazza Legal Group who handle First Amendment and intellectual property complaints.
(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)