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By blocking users on Twitter, President Trump has violated the First Amendment, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
The lawsuit was brought by seven Twitter users — including a Texas police officer, a New York comedy writer and a Nashville surgeon — who claimed that Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed was an official government account and that preventing users from following it was unconstitutional.
In her ruling, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald wrote that the plaintiffs who sought to view and engage with Mr. Trump’s tweets alongside those who were not restricted were “protected by the First Amendment.” The judge, though, did not require the president or Twitter to unblock anyone.
The number of users blocked from the president’s account @realDonaldTrump, which has more than 52 million followers, is known only to Mr. Trump, to those who have access to his account and to Twitter.
On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Twitter said that the company would not comment on the ruling, and stressed that Twitter was not a party to the lawsuit on either side.
The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which joined the plaintiffs in the suit, posted personal statements from some of them on its website, including one from Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, a legal analyst from Washington.
On Wednesday, Ms. Buckwalter-Poza posted: “I sued the President, and I won.”
Here’s what six other Twitter users who were not part of the lawsuit had to say about their experience of being blocked by the president, and what this ruling means to them.
The lawsuit was brought by seven Twitter users — including a Texas police officer, a New York comedy writer and a Nashville surgeon — who claimed that Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed was an official government account and that preventing users from following it was unconstitutional.
In her ruling, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald wrote that the plaintiffs who sought to view and engage with Mr. Trump’s tweets alongside those who were not restricted were “protected by the First Amendment.” The judge, though, did not require the president or Twitter to unblock anyone.
The number of users blocked from the president’s account @realDonaldTrump, which has more than 52 million followers, is known only to Mr. Trump, to those who have access to his account and to Twitter.
On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Twitter said that the company would not comment on the ruling, and stressed that Twitter was not a party to the lawsuit on either side.
The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which joined the plaintiffs in the suit, posted personal statements from some of them on its website, including one from Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, a legal analyst from Washington.
On Wednesday, Ms. Buckwalter-Poza posted: “I sued the President, and I won.”
Here’s what six other Twitter users who were not part of the lawsuit had to say about their experience of being blocked by the president, and what this ruling means to them.
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, 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.In so holding, we reject the defendants’ contentions that the First Amendment does not apply in this case and that the President’s personal First Amendment interests supersede those of plaintiffs.
Trump’s Twitter is a particularly popular one, as the US president is known to go on regular tirades on the platform, most often about fake news
