Lawyers for social media platform X have declared a judgment that found in X’s favour against the eSafety Commissioner “a win for free speech in Australia”.
On Tuesday, the Administrative Review Tribunal struck out an order by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant, which demanded that Elon Musk’s X remove a post that insulted a transgender Australian man.
The order was made in Mach 2024 and relates to an X post about trans rights activist Teddy Cook, who is director of community health at NSW health organisation ACON.
Chris Elston, known on X as Billboard Chris, misgendered and insulted Cook, equated transgender identity with mental illness, and linked to an article suggesting Cook was “too smutty” for intergovernmental work.
At the time, X complied with an order from Inman-Grant to hide the post from Australian users, but later lodged an appeal against the removal notice.
In his ruling, the tribunal’s deputy president Damien O’Donovan said he was not satisfied that the post met “the statutory definition of cyber-abuse material targeted at an Australian adult”.
X was represented in court by Justin Quill, partner at major law firm Thomson Geer.
“This is a win for free speech in Australia,” Quill said in a statement on Tuesday night.
“It seems clear this is another example of the eSafety Commissioner overreaching in her role and making politically motivated decisions to moderate what she considers Australians should and shouldn’t read and hear from the outside world.”
Source: Elon Musk’s X wins ‘free speech’ fight against eSafety Commissioner