Trump Cannot Block Twitter Users From His Account, Court Rules

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President Donald Trump. Photo: Bloomberg[/caption] The most powerful man in the world can do a lot of things, but he can't block folks on Twitter.In an order Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald ruled President Donald Trump's blocking of individuals from his Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, based on their political views is a violation of those user's First Amendment rights.In a lengthy opinion, Buchwald agreed with the plaintiffs who have been blocked by Trump that the president's personal account falls under the public forum doctrine, as established by the U.S. Supreme Court. Blocking individuals because of their political views, then, is a free speech violation, Buchwald said.In siding with the plaintiffs, Buchwald rejected the government's position that the First Amendment doesn't apply to the case specifically, and also that Trump's own First Amendment interest supersede those of the plaintiffs.Buchwald also rejected the government's position that injunctive relief cannot be awarded against a U.S. president, but acknowledged it was "unnecessary to enter that legal thicket," stating that a declaratory judgment "should be sufficient, as no government official—including the President—is above the law." With the ruling, she said the assumption was that Trump and his staff would "remedy the blocking we have held to be unconstitutional."The decision represents a novel interpretation of the high court's precedent, pushing the doctrine from its analog roots in keeping government officials from censuring discourse at public events into the digital frontier of government officials on social media.The suit was brought by seven Twitter users who all claimed to have been blocked by Trump's personal account. All said the action occurred after being critical of Trump on the social media forum.Joined by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the plaintiffs argued that Trump's Twitter account should be held to a different standard than that of a private citizen. They argued that, since Trump routinely uses his personal account as a place for the discussion and dissemination of government-related information and decisions, it should be held to the same standards as any other government forum.By blocking the users, which keeps them from seeing Trump's tweets, interacting with the president on the social media forum, or seeing the responses from other users to what the president has said, Trump was in violation of the public forum doctrine, which bars government officials from denying political speech in a government-controlled property.The government argued that Trump's ability to block was a function of Twitter itself, not an action empowered by the law itself. But Buchwald agreed with the plaintiffs, finding Trump's Twitter account represented a government-controlled property, even though Twitter itself is a private company."No one can seriously contend that a public official’s blocking of a constituent from her purely personal Twitter account—one that she does not impress with the trappings of her office and does not use to exercise the authority of her position—would implicate forum analysis, but those are hardly the facts of this case," Buchwald wrote.However, Buchwald acknowledged that not all aspects of the Twitter experience represented proper venues for public forum application. Comment threads, for example, aren't something Trump or his staff members can control, and therefore don't meet the forum threshold.The "interactive space" around Trump's tweeting did very much reach that threshold, Buchwald said."The interactivity of Twitter is one of its defining characteristics, and indeed, the interactive space of the President’s tweets accommodates a substantial body of expressive activity," she wrote.That Trump's team never contested the argument the plaintiffs were blocked because of their political expression, then, made it a clear exclusion of viewpoint, and therefore impermissible under the First Amendment, Buchwald found. Government officials don't lose their own First Amendment protections of association simply by entering government, she continued. They continue to have the right simply to ignore some views, while listening to others. But when it takes action to restrict certain voices, such as blocking their ability to interact at all with the president's tweets, the government "treads into territory proscribed by the First Amendment."That the president opted to block rather than simply mute the users—another feature provided by Twitter—illustrated the step-too-far nature of the president's actions.A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said in a statement that the department respectfully disagreed with Buchwald's decision, and is considering its next steps.In a statement of his own, Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director, said the plaintiffs were pleased with the decision, which “reflects a careful application of core First Amendment principles to government censorship on a new communications platform.”“The president’s practice of blocking critics on Twitter is pernicious and unconstitutional, and we hope this ruling will bring it to an end,” Jaffer said.