Trump Can Block People On Twitter If He Wants, Administration Says (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The administration of President Donald Trump is scoffing at a lawsuit by Twitter users who claim in a federal lawsuit that their constitutional rights are being violated because the president has blocked them from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter handle. "It would send the First Amendment deep into uncharted waters to hold that a president's choices about whom to follow, and whom to block, on Twitter -- a privately run website that, as a central feature of its social-media platform, enables all users to block particular individuals from viewing posts -- violate the Constitution." That's part of what Michael Baer, a Justice Department attorney, wrote to the New York federal judge overseeing the lawsuit Friday. In addition, the Justice Department said the courts are powerless to tell Trump how he can manage his private Twitter handle, which has 35.8 million followers.

"To the extent that the President's management of his Twitter account constitutes state action, it is unquestionably action that lies within his discretion as Chief Executive; it is therefore outside the scope of judicial enforcement," Baer wrote. (PDF) Baer added that an order telling Trump how to manage his Twitter feed "would raise profound separation-of-powers concerns by intruding directly into the president's chosen means of communicating to millions of Americans."

Comments

Yup.

[galabar]

Sounds about right.

Re:Yup.

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything, folks should sue Twitter for allowing Trump to continue with his racist and hateful posts.

Which tweets are those?

And then reality.....

[meglon]

The Justice Department is powerless to tell the courts what they can, can't, or must, do.

Re: And then reality.....

[Baron_Yam]

>Ruth Bader Ginsburg us going to fuck Trump over, wait and see.

That's right. Let some else do it!

Or you could take responsibility (assuming you are American). It doesn't matter how you voted - your society and your system put Trump into the presidency. That requires a lot of tedious grass roots politics to address. And not the "kill those filthy Republicans" kind of adversarial actions that ultimately make things worse.

You need better education. You need to crush your religious right fanatics, and stomp on the resurgence of your 'alt-right'. Then you need to figure out how they felt so threatened they turned rabid in the first place, and fix that.

And don't ever, ever ally yourself with their kind again to give your political party an edge in an election. That means Republicans need to ditch the religious nuts who haven't discovered fire yet, and the Democrats have to disavow the right-think lefty fanatics who will try to ruin you for not agreeing with their latest lies.

Elections aren't a game where you celebrate a win, they're supposed to be a process to help you select legislative representatives to lead your nation.

a jobs program

[Tablizer]

Trump has made Constitutional lawyers, fact checkers, and news organizations richer.

Re:a jobs program

[Anonymous Coward]

Those willing to do anything to hurt the President at all costs need to remember that there will be more Presidents after Trump. Every challenge whether it be at the Constitutional, Federal, or State level will be used against future Presidents. Presidents the current antagonists actually support. Congress has already usurped some of the historical Executive powers with their limitations on how the President can handle the current sanctions against Russia. Since he has already been judged, without any evidence, of being a Russian agent he is effectively barred from trying to cooperate and improve the US-Russian relationship. At the end of the day the President is also the CIC and as such limiting his ability to interact with foreign countries using political dogma and unsubstantiated evidence impeded his Constitutional responsibilities as the CIC.

It is know looked upon as criminal suspicion when any elected or appointed officials talk to their foreign counterparts. Trump's back channel communications to countries such as Russia are practically declared treason even though every President before Trump has followed the same practice. What's worse is the people insinuating this action is illegal or improper know they are lying and counting on the public not to notice. Obama had back channel communications with Iran and even NK. These communications are important because it allows both countries, who may be enemies in public, to conduct some business that can avoid the political fallout in either country. No political leader in Iran would survive in power if they were seen talking to the Great Satan on the 6 o'clock news. Hell Iran has back channel communications with Israel. The US and Russia have had a dedicated phone line from the WH to the Kremlin since the 50's. Presidents have always been given substantial authority on foreign policy actions. Especially in public. Once upon a time the unofficial policy in the US was you could attack the President's actions in the US but no US government personnel from top to bottom would show the slightest disrespect to the President on foreign lands. The challenges against Trumps temporary immigration policies also are nothing more than attempts to erode a President's authority as it pertains to national security protections. Left out in the braying about the immigration orders was the fact that the orders were temporary and deemed necessary to allow a new administration to review the current state of those policies. Then the arguments against these temporary orders was the false perception that they effected millions of people. In both these cases Obama and even Bush would not have been challenged in these decisions. All of these challenges have been politically driven in the extreme. They are attacking the system more than they are attacking Trump. The problem is these precedents will be enforced in the future. The extreme over reactions to anything associated with Trump has not helped anyone. The government is no longer able to function at any level. The efforts to sink Trump are sinking the entire political process and the base fundamentals the government needs in place to effectively manage the country. People are willing to sacrifice anything as long as they get rid of Trump and these same people think everything will magically go back into place when he is gone. That will not happen. The media can no longer pretend to be honest brokers of factual information. They were on shaky ground even before Trump came along. All the political commentarians were outed as morons when Trump's win laid bare the idiocy preached in their lofty commentaries and predications. If Clinton had won the election would anyone went after the Electoral College system? If Clinton won would her relationships with foreign countries who donated millions of dollars into the Clinton Foundation been investigated in any depth? I do not like Trump but the country doesn't need the US political family dynasty Clinton would have brought to office. One good thing Trump did accomplish even before stepping in

SubjectIsSubject

[p0p0]

Of course he can. It's his personal account.
Within seconds of a tweet being posted, he'll have hundreds of replies, almost instantaneously, from the same people consistently, who always manage to get out 6 part tweets within a few seconds of each other.

Spam, essentially. And what do we do with spam? We block it.
Admittedly that's how most people deal with @realDonaldTrump anyway.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[Baron_Yam]

I think it is very legitimately arguable that Trump's Twitter account is more official than a White House press briefing. As such, blocking Americans from it is probably not allowed.

Trump's account should be using the mute feature rather than the block feature (though the Twitter mute function seems pretty weak nearly to the point of ineffectiveness), or Trump should stop using Twitter as a presidential communications platform.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be viewed more like the press room where official announcements are given to the media. The general public does not have access to this room during press briefings, but they do gain access to the content though the press. Just as I am sure a disruptive member of the press would be removed and possibly banned from attending future press conferences.

So in much the same way if you are being disruptive on twitter you get banned as well. You'll almost certainly still be able to gain access to the contents of tweets though an alternate means, or you know just make a new twitter account.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[fustakrakich]

It's his personal account.

Then why can't he use a personal email account for official business also? I mean, the person who did that got into some trouble, so I heard.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[redmid17]

I agree it's more official than a private acct on a platform. He's using it as a bully pulpit as POTUS. That said, there were plenty of time, manner and place restrictions available to the government on all sorts of media platforms. I cannot call Trump right now and guarantee myself a time to talk with him. That would be absurd and I doubt anyone would disagree.

With Twitter he can't actually prevent anyone from seeing public tweets -- after all they can easily just open an incognito window or create a new Twitter handle -- but he can dictate who interacts with him. And once again, any number of restrictions apply to how we can interact with the President day in and day out.

I am a bit surprised Twitter has not come up with an option to block people but still let them read your tweets. If the case does go against Trump's administration, then it would not surprise me to see this option play out. This is one of the very few things I've agreed with Trump on and man it makes me feel dirtier (than normal).

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Too bad for you that the White House officially contradicted your statement back in June. They have yet to issue any "correction" on this until today.

"The president is president of the United States, so they are considered official statements by the president of the United States." White House Press Secretary Spicer

Just because Spicer no longer holds that position doesn't automatically make all his previous statements null and void. Now, Sebastian Gorka said "there's a difference between tweets and policy and @realDonaldTrump's feed is the former, not the latter" so once again the White House is giving contradicting messages on their policy. Therefor, since they can't give a coherent policy, the courts will have to decide this. But the White House Communications Director/White House Press Secretary is higher up on the food chain than a Deputy Assistant.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[Solandri]

As long as he doesn't use it to:

• have secret discussions about things which are supposed to leave an auditable paper trail because they affect policy,
• delete messages which are subpoenaed because they could be relevant to a criminal investigation,
• send or receive classified materials over an unclassified network,

he can use a private service as much as he wants. Since the way Twitter works is to make anything he posts public, the first two can't happen. He can only get in trouble with it if he uses it to illegally reveal classified materials.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[Troy Roberts]

Any person acting as an official representative of the US government has many laws covering his communication with the public. They are alleging that the presidents twitter account is being used for official communications with the public, and as such he can not bar some citizens from receiving those communications.

Its funny how,

[arbiter1]

ALl they have to do it SIGN OUT and they can see what he post's. Its not like he banned from the internet or from the site completely. Just another smear campaign against the president they don't like.

Re:Its funny how,

[swillden]

Fuck you, lap dog apologist

You, sir, are the problem.

Oh, I thing the GP is wrong. Trump is using his Twitter account as an official communications mechanism, in fact arguably it's the official White House communication channel, given the number of times Trump has used it to overrule his official press secretary in official white house press conferences. I also think Trump is an incompetent, narcissistic blowhard. With small hands.

But your style of response is increasingly common, on both sides of the aisle. Unthinking, unreasoning, reflexive bile directed against anyone you believe disagrees with you. There can be no reasoned debate, which means there is absolutely no possibility of identifying common ground or working towards agreement, or even compromise. You and your kind are a serious threat to democracy.

Who cares?

[trogdor_linux]

I'm not on twitter. It took me exactly 15 seconds to search @realdonaldtrump on a search engine and pull up his Twitter account where I can read his inane babbling all day if I want. It's hard to take Trump's critics seriously when they keep whining about complete nonsense like this.

Not exactly.

[SeattleLawGuy]

The Justice Department is powerless to tell the courts what they can, can't, or must, do.

A big part of presenting a position to a court is telling them what they can or can't do. They (and then the appellate courts) have to decide if you're right. You'd be amazed at what portion of legal matters in court involve decisions made by judges where they might rather do something else that might make more sense in a particular case, but they have limited power. In reality, while there are many judges from both sides of the aisle whom we may disagree with from time to time, this restraint is why the notion of the "activist judge" is basically a myth, especially at the federal level.

The courts defer to the executive or Congress on a wide variety of matters. Still, blocking a person prevents them from viewing your tweet and thus from interacting with it, which certainly limits that person's ability to comment on that tweet in a forum with thirty million plus people. It stretches credulity that you could convince a judge that a forum of thirty million people is anything other than a fully public forum, and free speech protections are at their zenith when talking about political matters in a public forum.

The blocked person may have ample alternative avenues for communication, but preventing them from commenting on the basis of their speech is still a content-based restraint on speech and IIRC is presumptively unconstitutional. Still, First Amendment doctrine is a bit labyrinthine and it would take a full briefing to lay out and evaluate the issue fully.

Re:Not exactly.

[meglon]

It requires nothing of private companies.... but official government forums?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Or, for this purpose....

Congress shall make no law.... abridging the freedom of speech..... or the right of the people ( ) to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If Trump's twitter is personal, than it's not an official forum, BUT, the White House has stated repeatedly that it IS an official forum. So yes, this is in the courts purview, and it isn't black and white. Cutting people off from an official forum seems to be a violation of the first amendment twice over, regardless of what the DoJ happens to opinion about it. Deleting tweets after the fact also may run afoul of preserving official records.