Government

Judge Rules Trump Twitter Feed A Public Forum, President Can Mute, But Not Block, Users

Hey look, it's an actual application of the First Amendment

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Attendant to his many other faults, President Donald Trump is a snowflake. He can’t take criticism — reasonable, constructive, or otherwise — and so he tries very hard to stay protected in a little bubble of yes-men and Fox & Friends. Of course, he blocks many people from his Twitter account. People who say ouchy words that President Snowflake does not like.

The problem is that Trump also uses his Twitter account to conduct official public business. He has turned Twitter into an official propaganda arm of the U.S. government (why Twitter is okay with this is another question entirely).

It therefore stands to reason that when the president blocks someone from his Twitter account, he’s taking state action that violates the First Amendment.

That’s the way Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the Southern District of New York saw it. Buchwald ruled the Trump’s Twitter feed is a public forum, and that blocking people violates those citizen’s First Amendment rights. From Vox:

“We hold that portions of the @realDonaldTrump account — the ‘interactive space’ where Twitter users may directly engage with the content of the President’s tweets — are properly analyzed under the ‘public forum’ doctrines set forth by the Supreme Court,” Buchwald wrote in her definitely not tweet-length opinion, “that such space is a designated public forum, and that the blocking of the plaintiffs based on their political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment.”

Instead, Judge Buchwald said that there was no Constitutional problem with Trump muting users he doesn’t like.

“Critically … the muted account may still reply directly to the muting account, even if that reply is ultimately ignored,” the judge said, adding a blocked user can’t reply, which makes all the difference.

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The court has made its decision, but now let’s see them enforce it. The mistake Trump opponents constantly make is assuming that this president will do anything he doesn’t actively feel like doing in the moment.

Is somebody going to make Trump unblock all the people he has blocked? Is there going to be some kind of penalty for him when he blocks the next user (please let it be me, please let it be me)? What is the point of a court order if nobody in the country has the strength or the will to enforce against the ruling despot?

On the scale of “constitutional crisis caused by President Trump,” this is a small version of it. But, legally speaking, somebody needs to PHYSICALLY PREVENT the president from violating the Constitution on his phone… and I promise you, nobody actually has the courage to do it.

Other than that, no concerns.

Trump can’t block users on Twitter, judge says [Vox]

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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