Lawyers for Donald Trump and Sundar Pichai have been in private negotiations for four months in hopes of resolving the president’s 2021 “de-platforming” lawsuit against YouTube and the CEO, Business Insider has confirmed — and now the judge is demanding a public update.
In an order issued from Oakland late Tuesday, US District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told the parties to provide “a substantive plan” for resolving the lawsuit.
The judge rejected the parties’ joint request for two more months to let negotiations play out before their next court appearance. Instead, she set an October 6 date for a public videoconference and directed them to file an update by September 29.
“The parties have failed to provide the Court with sufficient substantive information regarding resolution of this action,” she wrote.
“She’s holding our feet to the fire a little,” Trump attorney John Q. Kelly told Business Insider, confirming that settlement talks are ongoing but declining to divulge details.
Trump and a half-dozen additional plaintiffs, including the American Conservative Union and right-wing author Naomi Wolf, are seeking cash damages and other relief in response to YouTube suspending their accounts in the wake of the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
Pichai is the CEO of Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube. YouTube and Pinchai are named as the defendants in the lawsuit.
Kelly, who said he is representing the president in a private capacity, said he expects the parties will include an update on their settlement negotiations in the filing due September 29.
“We will give her a conclusive update or have a resolution by then,” he said.
An attorney for Pichai did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter suspended Trump’s accounts in January 2021 after members of Congress and other federal officials expressed concern that his social media posts could incite further violence at the Capitol.
Trump and his co-plaintiffs responded the following July with a class action suit in Florida, accusing all three platforms and their CEOs of violating their free speech rights; the case was later transferred to California, where Google is headquartered.
The lawsuit remained on ice for years as Trump appealed an initial finding that the Constitution’s free speech protections did not apply to decisions made by Twitter, a private company.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, rebranding it as X and quickly lifting Trump’s ban. Meta and Google lifted their own suspensions of Trump’s Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts by last summer.
By early this year, all but Google’s Pichai had settled with Trump. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and agreed to pay $25 million to resolve his portion of the lawsuit. Musk settled for $10 million in February.
Gonzalez Rogers has twice extended the deadline for an initial case management conference between the plaintiffs and YouTube in the four months since May, when the parties first alerted her — in a joint letter penned by Kelly — that they were engaged in “productive discussions regarding next steps.”
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