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Twitter Users Blocked By Trump Sue, Claim @realDonaldTrump Is Public Forum (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A handful of Twitter users, backed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, sued President Donald Trump on Tuesday, claiming their constitutional rights are being violated because the president has blocked them from his @realDonaldTrump handle. The suit claims that Trump's Twitter feed is a public forum and an official voice of the president. Excluding people from reading or replying to his tweets -- especially because they tweeted critical comments -- amounts to a First Amendment breach, according to the lawsuit.
"The @realDonaldTrump account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another," according to the lawsuit (PDF) filed in New York federal court. "Defendants' viewpoint-based blocking of the Individual Plaintiffs from the @realDonaldTrump account infringes the Individual Plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their participation in a designated public forum," the suit says. "It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to access statements that Defendants are otherwise making available to the public at large. It also imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to petition the government for redress of grievances."
"The @realDonaldTrump account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another," according to the lawsuit (PDF) filed in New York federal court. "Defendants' viewpoint-based blocking of the Individual Plaintiffs from the @realDonaldTrump account infringes the Individual Plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their participation in a designated public forum," the suit says. "It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to access statements that Defendants are otherwise making available to the public at large. It also imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to petition the government for redress of grievances."
Some in his WH cabinet have claimed it is official.
It is a private forum. The owners of that private forum should have already cancelled the tiny handed one's Twitter account for multiple violations of TOS. Others have been banned for far less than what the orange clown has said.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
actually, his communications officer has declared it to be an official communication channel. Which by the way, means deleting tweets from it between his first and last day in office is a violation of the communications preservations acts.
"Some in his WH cabinet have claimed it is official."
Leave it to an AC to not know the difference between "public" and "official." He has an official plane, too. Doesn't mean you get a ride in it.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
In the context of the First Amendment, such a meeting is called a limited public forum, and is subject to some restrictions by the government that organized it. http://www.firstamendmentcente... goes into more depth about what is and isn't allowed.
I very much doubt that the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account will be held to be either a traditional or limited public forum for the purposes of First Amendment analysis. It meets the usual criteria for a nonpublic forum, and any "public" uses of it align closely with Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37 (1983) as described at https://canons.sog.unc.edu/lim....