The U.S. Justice Department has thrown its weight behind Elon Musk’s X in the company’s appeal against advertisers including Lego and Ørsted, arguing that a Texas court dismissed the antitrust case on the wrong legal grounds.
DR Nyheder reports that it has reviewed new American court documents showing the Justice Department’s intervention. The department argues that the federal judge in Texas made a series of legal errors when she threw out the case earlier in 2026. The filing is a 45 page amicus curiae brief submitted after X appealed.
The dispute began in August 2024, when X sued a group of large advertisers over an alleged illegal advertising boycott. The central claim was that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, known as GARM, coordinated the boycott with several of its members. Danish companies Lego and Ørsted were both named as defendants.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, the brief was filed on August 12, 2026 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in X Corp. v. Mars, Inc. et al. Law360 reported that the government’s brief targets the district court’s reasoning on antitrust injury. As DR notes, the department takes no position on whether the advertisers actually broke the law.
Reuters reported that Judge Jane Boyle dismissed the case in March 2026, finding that X had failed to show antitrust injury. The same report listed Mars, CVS, Nestlé, Lego, Tyson, Shell and Ørsted among the defendants. For Ørsted, the judge also found that the case could not be heard in Texas at all.
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The Justice Department argues that the Texas court read competition law too narrowly. Per the brief, an unlawful boycott does not have to be organized by a direct competitor of the affected company. The department also states that large advertisers can breach competition law by coordinating conduct on the buyer side of a market.
Court documents from 2024 cited by DR showed that an Ørsted employee repeatedly contacted GARM about the company’s handling of Twitter, now X, after Musk’s takeover. In an email from November 4, 2022, the employee asked GARM for its perspective on a potential boycott among many companies. GARM responded that it had made no recommendation on whether Ørsted should stay on the platform.
Ørsted has previously rejected any wrongdoing and demanded the case be dismissed, while Lego has argued the case against it cannot be tried in the United States. DR says neither company had responded to its requests for comment.
Republican states also back X
Twelve Republican-led states filed a separate brief supporting X, arguing the Texas judge wrongly dismissed the claims against foreign companies including Lego and Ørsted. The appeals court has not yet decided whether the case will be revived.
Reuters also reported on July 29, 2026 that X and the World Federation of Advertisers settled their separate litigation over GARM, leaving the appeal against the advertiser defendants in place.
