Facebook Defeats Armslist’s Account Termination Lawsuit–Armslist v. Facebook

April 10, 2025 · by · in Content Regulation, Derivative Liability

In 2020, Facebook and Instagram terminated various Armslist-related accounts, and Facebook prevented users from sending the URL armslist.com in private messages. Armslist claims these actions were in response to government jawboning targeting Armslist. Armslist sued Facebook and Instagram, alleging that the account terminations violated the Pennsylvania’s Constitutional protections for free speech. The state appellate court disagrees.

Armstlist’s state constitution-based jawboning claim immediately hits a massive snag. The Pennsylvania Constitution only restricts the actions of Pennsylvania state and local government officials—not federal government officials, such as the members of Congress who allegedly jawboned Armslist. Oops.

In addition to that flaw, the court says that Armslist’s allegations of jawboning don’t rise to NRA v. Vullo’s level of censorial threats. The opinion recounts many details about the communications between the government and Facebook regarding Armslist, and the court is unpersuaded by the evidence:

in 2013, seven years before Appellees took action on Appellants’ accounts, Senator Markey sent a letter to Zuckerberg, asking him to prohibit posts for direct or indirect firearms sales on Appellees’ platforms. This letter threatened no adverse consequences, and therefore does not rise to the level of government coercion. Similarly, the allegation that Senator Whitehouse has stated that he wants to know “how [Facebook] plan[s] to prevent bad actors from using ads to secretly spread misinformation,” includes no threat of adverse governmental action.

…in 2018, Senator Feinstein threatened to increase federal regulation over Facebook if it failed to “provide the censorship that she deems appropriate.” However, the Complaint does not allege that Senator Feinstein was asking Appellees to censor posts related to firearms sales, let alone limit Appellants’ activity. Nor did her statement threaten immediate adverse governmental action against Appellees. To the contrary, her statement concedes that Appellees currently enjoy immunity under Section 230. That a sitting senator “threatened” to introduce legislation that had no bearing on Appellants’ speech and that would need to pass through Congress and be signed into law before enforced against Appellees is too attenuated to be reasonably construed as a threat of immediate adverse action. Nor was the Senator’s 2018 statement temporally close enough to Appellees’ actions in 2020 as to establish a causal link between the threat to introduce legislation regulating Appellees for unrelated reasons and Appellees’ removal of Appellants’ accounts.

… in February 2020, shortly after Appellees began removing Appellants’ accounts, 13 U.S. Senators sent a letter to Zuckerberg stating, “it is not enough to simply ban [direct gun] sales,” and asking to know the protections Facebook has in place to prevent users from skirting Facebook’s “gun sale policy.” Not only do these statements fail to threaten adverse governmental consequences, but they also suggest that Appellees already had a policy against the use of the platform to facilitate gun sales, before any alleged governmental “coercion.” The allegations thus tend to show that rather than bowing to government pressure, Appellants [sic–I think this should be Appellees] were exercising their independent judgment in removing or restricting the accounts according to their policies reserving the right to remove content in the interest of community protection.

… after Appellees removed Appellants’ accounts, Senators Feinstein, Whitehouse, and Blumenthal introduced legislation aimed at eliminating Armslist’s Section 230 immunity. This was not a communication directed at Appellees and did not threaten any adverse action against them. Moreover, it occurred after the accounts’ removal.

The overlap between the Senators’ pressure and Facebook/Instagram’s independent editorial decisions brought to mind the uncited O’Handley case.

As usual, I’m internally conflicted about jawboning cases. I support the court’s decision, but I’m unhappy with the conduct of our taxpayer-funded representatives. The members of Congress shouldn’t have pressured Facebook and Instagram like they did. Even if their pressure was not coupled with a censorial threat (which is always implied, even if it’s not explicitly communicated), the Senators clearly targeted Constitutionally protected speech for suppression. All of the named Senators deserve condemnation for their censorial mindset (and the named individuals remaining in the Senate have learned nothing from this and the other lawsuits over their jawboning). Yet, it’s obvious that Facebook and Instagram could set their editorial agenda as they see fit, and the blocking actions were the result of that editorial freedom.

Note for Section 230 critics: Section 230 often gets blamed for enabling Internet services to make illegitimate account terminations or content removals. Here, Section 230 played no role in the court’s substantive analysis of why Armslist should lose.

Though the state constitution angle was slightly unusual, the outcome was routine: this case is just one more unsuccessful lawsuit over account terminations.

Case Citation: Armslist LLC v. Facebook, Inc., 2025 PA Super 78 (Pa. Superior Ct. April 3, 2025)

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