The US government has decided to support X and its owner Elon Musk in their attempt to annul the 120 million euro fine imposed by the European Commission (EC).
The fine was imposed in December 2025 for non-compliance with the censorship law known as the DSA, and X and Musk are fighting it at the EU’s General Court.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced it was intervening in the case on the side of X and Musk, and that the two cases, X Internet and X Holdings v Commission, and Musk v Commission, are now the first DSA enforcement action to reach the General Court.
The December fine was the first non-compliance decision under the DSA, the Commission said at the time.
The DoJ’s filing came after coordination with the State Department, The US is intervening as a third party, which the EU’s Court of Justice allows under Article 40 of its Statute, where a person or a state can “establish an interest in the result of the case to the Court.”
The DoJ’s argument is that the Commission “inappropriately attempted to expand its regulatory authority to reach American companies not present or operating within its jurisdiction,” as Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Civil Division put it.
Shumate also said that the US will “not tolerate the European Commission engaging in regulatory overreach to try and control American engines of innovation and economic growth.”
The DoJ announcement also noted that the fine was based on the “total worldwide annual turnover of the single economic unit ultimately controlled by Elon Musk or that of X Holdings Corp.” – and that the Commission’s approach was to treat X and Musk as one entity.
This is seen as a breach of the principle of the corporate veil, that “there is, in general, no entitlement to look behind the corporate structure in order to take action against shareholders.”
In other words, the Commission is accused of ignoring the difference between a company and its owner.
The DoJ also sees the fact that the Commission went after Musk as a private individual, and other companies he owns that have nothing to do with X, as extended legal scrutiny.
The original decision by the Commission was that X had failed to comply with the DSA by using “deceptive design” when it came to the blue checkmark, that was introduced as a way to verify identities, but was in fact available to anyone who would pay for it.
The Commission also found X in violation of the DSA over an ad repository that was not transparent or accessible, and for denying researchers access to public data, including by banning scraping in its terms of service.
But the DSA’s defenders have been at pains to explain that the law is not about censorship, and the fine was not about censorship, but about X’s design and data access policies. The question remains how that is any better, and the case is important to show how the DSA works in practice.
X proposed remedies in March 2026, and the Commission accepted them in July of the same year – before the court in Luxembourg could rule whether the Commission had the right to impose them.
