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posted by martyb on Friday May 25 2018, @03:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the rejection-rejected dept.

President Trump's practice of blocking Twitter users who are critical of him from seeing his posts on the social media platform violates the First Amendment, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday.

The ruling came in a case brought by seven Twitter users who had been blocked by the @realDonaldTrump account after they criticized the president.

The plaintiffs, who were joined in the suit by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, claimed that Mr. Trump's Twitter feed is an official government account and that blocking users from following it was a violation of their First Amendment rights.

In her ruling, Federal District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald wrote of the plaintiffs that "the speech in which they seek to engage is protected by the First Amendment" and that Mr. Trump and Dan Scavino, the White House social media director, "exert governmental control over certain aspects of the @realDonaldTrump account."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/business/media/trump-twitter-block.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

See also: http://time.com/4808270/sean-spicer-donald-trump-twitter-statements/:

When asked at a press briefing whether Trump's tweets qualify as official statements on behalf of the White House, Spicer said that he "is the President of the United States, so they're considered official statements by the President of the United States."


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 25 2018, @08:12PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 25 2018, @08:12PM (#684183)

    president to make an official proclamation, and Twitter isn't one of them

    Except that the White House says that it is.

    Expressing an opinion is not something you've ever denied to any other president.

    And we the people, as voiced by the court, are not denying the orange oaf his right to speak wherever and however he wishes, opinion, fact, deluded fantasies, all fair and available.

    What has been judged by the court as inappropriate is for the President to censor his speech, deny access to it to selected persons who desire to hear it.

    You, (most specifically you), are never given any status to make such a decision as to what is official.

    I presume to repeat what the court has already decreed. If the orange one feels himself to be above the court's judgement: bring it on, the impeachment will go that much faster and certainly.

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