Trump can't block Twitter users: Judge

The Telegraph 
May 25, 2015


Apart from the man himself, perhaps nothing has defined President Trump's political persona more than Twitter.

But on Wednesday, one of Trump's Twitter habits - his practice of blocking critics on the service, preventing them from engaging with his account - was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in Manhattan.

Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, addressing a novel issue about how the Constitution applies to social media platforms and public officials, found that the president's Twitter feed is a public forum.

As a result, she ruled that when Trump or an aide blocked seven plaintiffs from viewing and replying to his posts, he violated the First Amendment

If the principle undergirding Wednesday's ruling in Federal District Court stands, it is likely to have implications far beyond Trump's feed and its 52 million followers, said Jameel Jaffer, the Knight First Amendment Institute's executive director and the counsel for the plaintiffs.

Public officials throughout the country, from local politicians to governors and members of Congress, regularly use social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to interact with the public about government business.

"This ruling should put them on notice, and if they censor critics from social media accounts used for official purposes, they run the risk that someone will sue them and win," he said.

Asked whether the administration would unblock the users or appeal the ruling, Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the justice department's civil division, demurred from making any specific pronouncement. "We respectfully disagree with the court's decision and are considering our next steps," she said.

In her ruling, Judge Buchwald said Trump and Dan Scavino, the White House social media director, "exert governmental control over certain aspects of the @realDonaldTrump account." But she did not issue an injunction ordering Trump or Scavino to unblock the users, a nod to the separation-of-powers sensitivities of a judge's ordering a President to do something.

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