A federal judge in Manhattan ruled Wednesday it is a violation of the First Amendment for President Trump to block critics from viewing his Twitter account.
“This case requires us to consider whether a public official may, consistent with the First Amendment, ‘block’ a person from his Twitter account in response to the political views that person has expressed, and whether the analysis differs because that public official is the President of the United States,” U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said in her ruling. “The answer to both questions is no.”
The lawsuit was filed in July by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of seven people who were blocked by @realDonaldTrump on Twitter after criticizing the president.
The plaintiffs argued that in blocking them from the president’s Twitter account, their First Amendment rights had been violated because his account is a public forum.
[Related: Judge suggests Trump mute, not block, his critics on Twitter]
In her ruling, Buchwald agreed.
“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,” she wrote.
The Justice Department said it is examining how to proceed.
“We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision and are considering our next steps,” Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department said.
Since becoming president, Trump has used his Twitter account to comment on issues unrelated to government business, but also to make policy and personnel announcements related to official government business.
In June, for example, the president used Twitter to announce his intent to nominate Chris Wray for director of the FBI. He also used his Twitter account to announce the firings of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, as well as to unveil a policy banning transgender people from serving in the military.
Citing these examples, and arguing that Trump’s tweets are official records that have to be preserved, Buchwald said Trump and Scavino operate @realDonaldTrump as if it is an “presidential” account.
“That is, the president presents the @realDonaldTrump account as being a presidential account as opposed to a personal account and, more importantly, uses the account to take actions that can be taken only by the president as president. Accordingly, we conclude that the control that the president and Scavino exercise over the account and certain of its features is governmental in nature,” she wrote.
After being blocked by the president, the plaintiffs in the case were prevented from viewing Trump’s tweets and replying to his tweets.
But that may soon change, as Buchwald urged Trump and Scavino to unblock the president’s critics following her ruling.
“Because no government official is above the law and because all government officials are presumed to follow the law once the judiciary has said what the law is, we must assume that the President and Scavino will remedy the blocking we have held to be unconstitutional,” Buchwald said.
The Justice Department had pushed for the lawsuit to be dismissed and argued the president uses his Twitter account, started years before he ran for political office, on his own accord.
The decision to block his fellow Twitter users, the government argued, “is not properly considered state action.”
