Elon Musk’s X Corp has filed a notice of appeal against the dismissal of its advertising boycott lawsuit targeting the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and ten major companies, taking the legal battle to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The company has not yet filed substantive arguments with the appeals court.

The lawsuit originates from a legal action filed in 2024 in which X alleged that the Belgian-based WFA and its now defunct brand safety initiative, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, known as GARM, orchestrated a coordinated advertising boycott that cost the social media platform billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Beyond the WFA, X also named ten prominent companies as defendants in the suit, alleging they conspired with GARM to withhold advertising spend from the platform. The defendants include energy companies Ørsted and Shell, food giants Mars, Nestlé and Tyson Foods, healthcare company CVS, pharmaceutical firm Abbott, personal care brand Colgate-Palmolive, toy maker Lego and social platform Pinterest.

United States District Court Judge Jane Boyle of the Northern District of Texas dismissed the lawsuit last month, ruling that X’s allegations, even if proven true, would not be sufficient to establish an antitrust claim. In her ruling, Judge Boyle found that the complaint failed to allege that the WFA and its co-defendants sought to benefit any of X’s competitors through the alleged boycott.

Judge Boyle was direct in her assessment of the limits of X’s legal argument. “The conspiring advertisers here did not attempt to force X to advertise with only GARM advertisers so that they could control the social media advertising market or any other market,” she wrote.

“They merely decided that they would not buy from X for their own advertising needs, notwithstanding if X sold advertising space to anyone else.” She also noted that the advertisers were not alleged to have attempted to prevent other companies from advertising on X.

The lawsuit was filed three weeks after the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee published a report accusing GARM of coordinating action by corporations, advertising agencies and other industry groups to demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets and other content it deemed disfavoured.

That report specifically accused GARM of colluding to cut advertising revenue to X following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform in October 2022. According to the complaint, between November and December 2022, at least 18 GARM members stopped advertising on the platform, while dozens of others substantially reduced their advertising spend.

The WFA disbanded GARM in August 2024, just days after Musk filed the original suit. The trade organisation has consistently maintained that GARM’s brand safety standards were voluntary and that member companies were free to accept or reject those standards at their own discretion. X Corp’s appeal signals that the legal dispute is far from over despite the district court’s dismissal.