Tag: Naomi Reice Buchwald

The Story:  The US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that it is unconstitutional for President Trump to block people from...

President Donald Trump can't block Twitter users because of their political opinions without violating the First Amendment, a New York federal judge has ruled. They claimed the president uses Twitter as a public forum to share official information in his capacity as president and therefore was violating their right to petition the government by blocking them. The Department of Justice, in a motion for summary judgment filed in October, challenged plaintiffs' standing to sue and argued his use of the social media platform isn't regulated by the First Amendment. In a 75-page order issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald found that Twitter is indeed a designated public forum and "viewpoint-based exclusion" of the plaintiffs from that forum violates the First Amendment. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and former communications director Hope Hicks are dismissed as defendants in the suit, but social media director Daniel Scavino remains a defendant because he routinely accesses Trump's Twitter account. While this lawsuit targets Trump's behavior, Buchwald's ruling extends to all public officials — and could likely spark a wave of similar litigation against other block-happy government employees. "The answer to both questions is no." Buchwald held that the @realDonaldTrump account meets the Supreme Court's standards for a designated public forum and barring participation based on political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination and "no government official — including the President — is above the law." She notes that not only does Trump tweet about his policies, agenda and other government business from that account but he also sometimes makes official announcements from it before they're announced to the public through more traditional channels. Her analysis highlights the conversational nature of Twitter as a platform, and notes that Trump would have been better off muting the users whose opinions he'd rather not read because blocking them restricts their ability to speak by limiting their ability to reply to his tweets.