As the president uses realdonaldtrump to conduct official business, a court has ruled that he cannot block other users
IT HAS been a rough fortnight in the federal courts for President Donald Trump. On June 27th, his bid to add a citizenship question to the census failed to win the blessing of a Supreme Court majority. On July 3rd, his national-emergency declaration to fund a wall on America’s southern border was blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California.
the president that one of his Twitter habits—blocking users with whom he disagrees—violates the First Amendment of the constitution.two years ago by seven Twitter users whose messages critical of the president spurred Mr Trump to block them from viewing or interacting with his tweets. Since taking office in January 2017, the plaintiffs argued, Mr Trump has been using his Twitter account “as an instrument of his presidency” from which he broadcasts key “news and information about the government”.
One thorn in Mr Trump’s side was comedian Nick Pappas, who in 2017 posted a cheeky response to a presidential tweet on the administration’s ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries. “Trump is right”, Mr Pappas wrote. “The government should protect the people. That’s why the courts are protecting us from him”. This bit of criticism earned Mr Pappas a block, which prevented him from seeing the president’s tweets while signed into his account and barred him from engaging with them.
In finding for the plaintiffs, the three-judge panel emphasised the “extraordinarily high level of public engagement” with Mr Trump’s tweets—”thousands of replies, some of which, in turn, generate hundreds of thousands of additional replies”. And the court noted “all the trappings of an official, state-run account” emblazoned on the president’s Twitter page: “Donald J.
The Second Circuit clarified that its decision would not affect all social-media profiles held by public officials. A state legislator who uses an account mainly to post cat photos and baseball updates would not be subject to the same constraints and could presumably block users who make fun of his pet or favourite team.
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