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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:57AM
The Burgess quote is from when he spoke in 2011 to "a group of Tea Party activists in Keller, Texas" [upi.com] on the possibility of raising the debt ceiling, and "a constituent suggested impeaching Obama to stop his agenda."
The Inhofe quote was about the Benghazi fiasco. [thehill.com]