Even the online trolls have a right to view President Trump’s Twitter feed, according to an appeals court in New York.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit on Monday upheld a lower court ruling that it is unconstitutional for Trump to block users on Twitter. If someone is blocked by an account on the platform, the person cannot view any of the tweets sent by that account. Judges ruled that Trump’s Twitter is an official channel of communication.
“Excluding people from an otherwise public forum such as this by blocking those who express views critical of a public official is, we concluded, unconstitutional,” wrote Judge Barrington Parker, later adding: “Twitter is not just an official channel of communication for the President; it is his most important channel of communication.”
The ruling, which was delivered by the full circuit, had two Trump-appointed dissections. Judges Michael Park and Richard Sullivan disagreed with their peers and argued that elected officials should be allowed private social media interactions that are unhindered by critical accounts.
“The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech does not include a right to post on other people’s personal social media accounts, even if those other people happen to be public officials,” Park said, also noting that Trump’s account, @realdonaldtrump, existed for several years before he became president.
Park warned that the precedent this ruling will set for all public officials could lead to social media pages “overrun with harassment, trolling, and hate speech, which officials will be powerless to filter.”
The ruling stemmed from a case brought against the president in 2017 by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of seven people who had been blocked by Trump. Katie Fallow, one of the attorneys from the case, agreed with the ruling, saying, “This case should send a clear message to other public officials tempted to block critics from social media accounts used for official purposes.”
Trump is not the only politician battling a social media lawsuit. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also facing a lawsuit from former Democratic New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who argued that the freshman congresswoman should not be allowed to block him on Twitter if the president is not allowed to block his critics.
