Cleveland, July 19, 2016: Republican National Convention – Conservative figure Alex Jones uses a megaphone to voice his opinion as he increases the level of tension between protestersInfoWars, PayPal Spat Set to Go Down in Arbitration
Marc Randazza, repping InfoWars' parent company in a discrimination suit against PayPal, has moved to dismiss the case without prejudice, citing an arbitration clause in PayPal's user agreement.
November 05, 2018 at 07:41 PM
3 minute read
One month after filing a discrimination suit against PayPal on behalf of the publisher behind the controversial InfoWars website, plaintiffs attorney Marc Randazza has moved to dismiss the suit without prejudice, looking to send the dispute to arbitration.
Free Speech Systems LLC, the publisher behind the right-wing political commentary site founded by radio personality Alex Jones, filed suit against PayPal on Oct. 1, alleging the online payment company violated California's Unruh Civil Rights Act for “arbitrarily banning” the company from its services “for off-platform speech.” On Monday, FSS's attorney Randazza moved to dismiss all claims of his own lawsuit, aiming to route proceedings to arbitration on grounds of an arbitration clause in PayPal's user agreement.
“Rather than burden the parties and the court with motion practice regarding the enforceability of the arbitration provision, FSS plans to proceed with its dispute under the terms of the user agreement,” Randazza wrote in his motion. Randazza earlier cited the arbitration agreement in a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prevent PayPal from terminating FSS's accounts on its site “until an arbitrator rules on whether to issue such injunctive relief.”
In her denial of the TRO, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California wrote that Randazza's acknowledgment that “any potential relief granted by the court” would only last until an arbitrator weighed in brought into question whether the dispute “is even properly before the court.”
Representing PayPal in the lawsuit were Keker, Van Nest & Peters partners Matthew Werdegar and Khari Tillery and Ballard Spahr's David Bodney, Mark Kokanovich and Scott Humphreys.
Werdegar, Bodney and Randazza didn't respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit began after PayPal told FSS in September that it would cease processing transactions to the site via its online payment platform, writing in an email that the right-wing website violated terms of its user policy by promoting “hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions.”
In the October lawsuit, Randazza said that PayPal's actions constituted unfair business practices “by enforcing its contractual terms in an unconscionable manner.”
“Defendant PayPal is the most recent company to join this campaign of censorship. It banned plaintiff from its payment-processing platform for no reason other than disagreement with the messages plaintiff conveys,” Randazza wrote in the complaint.
Read the motion to dismiss below:
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