Sometime between March and April 2019, Amro Elansari noticed that he was being muted in Jagex's online games, specifically the MMO Runescape, according to Pennlive. His complaint against the mute was dismissed, so he took the next natural and perfectly reasonable step and filed a DIY lawsuit alleging that Jagex discriminated against him and violated his rights to free speech and "due process."

Not surprisingly, the lawsuit was quickly dismissed; in a decision posted on brian.carnell.com, U.S. District Judge Mark Carney declared that his federal constitutional claim for being muted in a video game was "implausible."

Carney educated plaintiffs on the basics of constitutional law. He wrote, "The First Amendment and its constitutional guarantees of free speech restrict government actors, not private entities. Defendants who are alleged to be non-state actors are not subject to the constitutional guarantee of free speech," Kearney wrote. Similarly, "the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment 'applies only to the federal government, not to private persons, and limits only the federal government,' not to private entities." [But Elansari quickly appealed, and a less shocking result followed: earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit again defeated Elansari. His initial claim was based on the Fourteenth Amendment, but the court ruled that it was moot because "state action is a prerequisite for a Fourteenth Amendment claim, and Elansari has not made the claim that any defendant is a state actor."

The second argument is even more interesting. Citing Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Elansari next argues that the district court should have specified and considered the public accommodation discrimination claim in Elansari's complaint. Elansari argues that because Elansari's account was "compared to all other players who were not muted ...... muted,' and therefore Defendant Jajex should be held liable for 'disparate treatment,'" the decision, available at Justia, states.

"Title II prohibits '...... discrimination' and prohibits 'discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. Even construing Elansari's complaint generously to raise a public accommodations discrimination claim, and assuming that Elansari could raise such a claim in this context, neither in the district court nor on appeal has Elansari alleged that Jagex's online game because of discrimination on grounds protected under Title II At no point did he allege that he lost access."

There was no error in the judgment dismissing the complaint, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the original judgment: being muted in a video game does not constitute a violation of a constitutional right.

Pennlive reports that Ansari has filed 10 lawsuits in the past 18 months in the U.S. Eastern District Court, including four in July 2019, including the Jagex lawsuit; in November 2019, a federal appeals court rejected his efforts to file a class action against Tinder and noted that he was ineligible to represent other plaintiffs because he was not an attorney and that the amount of damages he could reasonably seek fell far short of the minimum required $75,000.