Nunes v. Twitter

A California congressman, Devin Nunes, filed suit in Virginia state court claiming that three users of Twitter defamed him in their tweets. Two of the Twitter users used parody names: Devin Nunes’ Cow and Devin Nunes’ Mom. To identify the owners of the parody accounts so that he could serve the lawsuit papers on them, Nunes served a subpoena seeking information about their identifies on a law firm that was assisting in their legal defense. When the firm moved to quash the subpoena, Public Citizen, joined by the ACLU and ACLU of Virginia, filed an amicus brief in support of the motion, urging the court to apply the Dendrite standard and to deny enforcement of the subpoena because Nunes failed to satisfy the standard for showing a right to discovery into the identity of an anonymous speaker.