Judge: Prez violating 1st Amendment
WASHINGTON — A federal court ruling that President Trump’s practice of blocking critics on Twitter is unconstitutional could have a ripple effect from the
White House to town halls across the country and accelerate challenges to restrictions by public officials on other social media.
New York-based Judge Naomi Reichert Buchwald called Trump’s Twitter feed a “public forum,” and held that blocking users “based on theory political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment.”
While Buchwald stopped short of ordering Trump and White House aides to unblock users that Trump and his team have prevented from seeing or responding to his tweets, experts said the ruling makes clear that public officials in any office are running afoul of the Constitution if they continue to block Twitter users whose views they oppose.
“The court made clear that there was a First Amendment violation taking place,” said Eric Goldman, professor and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. “But the court expressed confidence that the government would comply” in correcting it.
Challengers called the ruling a victory.
“The president’s practice of blocking critics on Twitter is pernicious and unconstitutional, and we hope this ruling will bring it to an end,” said Jameel Jaffer, the Knight First Amendment Institute’s executive director, in a statement. The group filed the challenge to Trump’s Twitter blocking habits last year on behalf of seven individuals Trump blocked.
It is unclear what action Trump or members of his communications team will take in light of the ruling. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
But the judge’s decision leaves open the possibility that Trump could ignore the ruling altogether.
“It’s entirely possible that he will just thumb his nose at the ruling,” Goldman said.
That move would not only spur new challenges to determine what enforcement mechanisms exist to force the president to stop committing what the court found to be First Amendment violations, but could also cause other officials to continue the practice of blocking political opponents until ordered to stop.
The Knight Institute lodged a similar challenge on behalf of a Virginia resident claiming that a local official’s move to block him temporarily on Facebook also amounts to a First Amendment violation.
Those claims could be tougher, and turn on whether other lower courts — and potentially the U.S. Supreme Court — decide that other platforms are also public forums, and whether limiting speech there is unconstitutional. That determination could be complex, Goldman said, pointing out there are many ways to minimize or hide the speech of theirs in ways that may not be unconstitutional. Platforms such as Facebook, for example, allow more limited restrictions such as preventing other users from commenting on posts.