Texas judge who owns Tesla stock recuses himself from X’s advertiser lawsuit
Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge
A Texas judge who was assigned two cases involving Elon Musk’s X platform has recused himself from one of them, shortly after a report that he owns stock in Tesla.
US District Court Judge Reed O’Connor was assigned to X’s recent antitrust lawsuit against advertisers over their boycott of the service, as well as a separate case against Media Matters, which the company sued for a report showing that X displayed ads from major brands next to pro-Nazi content. On Tuesday, O’Connor filed a notice to the court clerk recusing himself from the antitrust lawsuit. He still appears to be assigned to the Media Matters case as of Tuesday afternoon.
The recusal came just a few days after NPR reported on O’Connor’s Tesla stock holdings, which, a…