WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden's

administration on Friday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to turn

away billionaire businessman Elon Musk's dispute with the

Securities and Exchange Commission.

Musk in December asked the justices to take up his appeal

after a lower court upheld his consent decree with the SEC that

arose after he posted on Twitter, now called X, in 2018 that he

had "funding secured" to take his electric car company Tesla

private. The SEC accused Musk of defrauding investors.

Musk's agreement was part of a settlement with the SEC under

which he and Tesla each paid $20 million fines, Musk gave up his

role as Tesla's chairman and he agreed to let a Tesla lawyer

approve some posts on Twitter. Musk bought the social media

platform in 2022 and renamed it.

Musk has called the consent decree a "muzzle" on his

constitutional free speech rights.

The Justice Department in its filing said that "the

settlement term here was reasonably designed to minimize the

likelihood that petitioner (Musk) would make future false or

misleading statements in violation of the securities laws."

A three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit

of Appeals rejected Musk's claim that the SEC exploited the

decree to conduct harassing investigations into his use of

Twitter.

In its ruling, the 2nd Circuit decided Musk could not

revisit the screening of Twitter posts on grounds that he had

"changed his mind." The 2nd Circuit in July 2023 denied Musk's

request to rehear the case.

Musk's lawyers have said the SEC had no right to impose, as

a condition of settling, a "gag rule" that they contend violated

the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment constraints on

governmental limits on free speech. In his December court

filing, Musk's lawyers told the justices that authorizing the

SEC to require that Musk gain pre-approval for certain social

media posts had handed the agency "intolerable power."

In a separate legal action related to Musk, the New

Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to

reconsider its March decision that Musk violated federal labor

law by posting on Twitter in May 2018 that Tesla employees would

lose stock options if they joined a union. The 5th Circuit heard

arguments in the case in January.