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from the silence-all-disagreement-and-only-agreement-will-be-seen dept.
Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute has filed a lawsuit against President Trump for blocking seven users on Twitter, claiming that the action violates the users' First Amendment right to participate in a public political forum:
The institute filed suit today on behalf of seven Twitter users who were blocked by the president, which prevents them from seeing or replying to his tweets. It threatened legal action in a letter to Trump in June, and now "asks the court to declare that the viewpoint-based blocking of people from the @realDonaldTrump account is unconstitutional."
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District of New York, elaborates on the Knight Institute's earlier letter. It contends that Trump's Twitter account is a public political forum where citizens have a First Amendment right to speak. Under this theory, blocking users impedes their right to participate in a political conversation and stops them from viewing official government communication. Therefore, if Trump blocks people for criticizing his political viewpoints, he'd be doing the equivalent of kicking them out of a digital town hall.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday July 12 2017, @04:47PM
Yea. About that. Try showing up in the White House Press Room to make your point and watch how fast the MEDIA demand you be thrown out for violating their prerogative of being the Official Blessed Ones who get to decide which questions are going to be part of today's Narrative. That is what this is really all about. Forbid blocking and a swarm of trolls will crawl out of the Kos and DU swamp and make Twitter unusable. And that is the point of the exercise. If you have watched even an hour of MSM commentary since the election you know Trump's use of Twitter enrages them for the power it gives him to bypass them. They spend hours laying out a carefully coordinated attack designed to dominate a news cycle and then Trump derails it with a single tweet, forcing the conversation to whatever he would rather they talk about all weekend. They HATE it.