WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court

declined on Monday to hear Elon Musk's bid to throw out part of

a securities fraud settlement with the Securities and Exchange

Commission restricting the billionaire businessman's public

statements about his electric car company Tesla.

The justices turned away Musk's appeal of a lower court's

decision upholding the 2018 settlement reached after he said on

social media that he had "funding secured" to take Tesla private

- a statement the SEC in a legal action called false and

misleading.

Musk's settlement resolved the SEC lawsuit accusing him of

defrauding investors. Under the agreement, Musk and Tesla each

paid $20 million fines and he gave up his role as the company's

chairman. Musk also agreed to let a Tesla lawyer pre-approve

some posts he made on the social media platform then called

Twitter before Musk bought the company and renamed it X.

Musk later sought to terminate the pre-approval mandate,

with his lawyers in a court filing calling it a

"government-imposed muzzle" that amounted to an illegal prior

restraint on his speech.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan in 2022

rejected Musk's request. A three-judge panel of the

Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit of Appeals in 2023 upheld that

decision.

The 2nd Circuit said Musk chose to allow screening of his

Twitter posts, and had no right to revisit the matter "because

he has now changed his mind." The 2nd Circuit last year denied

Musk's request to rehear the case, prompting his appeal to the

Supreme Court.

Musk's lawyers argued that 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.