Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Federal Judiciary Blogs -> Second Opinions

Federal Judiciary

: Second Opinions

Trump Can't Block on Twitter

It's pretty well known that Trump does not like to be criticized.  And it's also well known that he really loves Twitter.  So to get the best of both worlds, he decided to block certain people from his Twitter feed -- people who criticized him, of course -- allowing him to tweet to his heart's content without these critics being able to respond.

And this being 21st Century America, he was sued for doing this.  The plaintiffs alleged that blocking them from his Twitter feed constituted a violation of their First Amendment rights.  The District Court granted summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs and entered a declaratory judgment to the effect that Trump's actions had violated the First Amendment.

Trump appealed claims that he blocked the plaintiffs from a private, personal account.  The government did not argue that the account was independent of Trump's presidency, but that the act of blocking was not state action.  Trump contended that his Twitter account is exclusively a vehicle for his own speech to which the plaintiffs had no right of access, and, accordingly, the First Amendment did not apply.

The Second Circuit held that the Twitter account was not just personal, but official and concluded  that once Trump had chosen a platform and opened up its interactive space to millions of users and participants, he could not selectively exclude those whose views he disagrees with.

The decision in Dnight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University v. Trump can be found here.

Full post as published by Second Opinions on July 09, 2019 (boomark / email).