Supreme Court dismisses case over Trump and Twitter critics
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a case over former President Donald Trump’s efforts to block critics from his personal Twitter account.
The court said there was nothing left to the case after Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter and ended his presidential term in January.
Twitter banned Trump two days after a deadly attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6.
The company said its decision was “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
The court also threw out an appeals court ruling that found Trump violated the First Amendment whenever he blocked a critic to silence a viewpoint.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate opinion arguing that the bigger issue raised by the case, and especially Twitter’s decision to boot Trump, is “the dominant digital platforms themselves. As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms.”
Thomas agreed with his colleagues about the outcome of the case, but said the situation raises “interesting and important questions.”
The case concerned the @realdonaldtrump account with more than 88 million followers and Trump’s argument that it is his personal property. The Justice Department argued that blocking people from it was akin to elected officials who refuse to allow their opponents’ yard signs on their front lawns.
But the federal appeals court in New York ruled last year that Trump used the account to make daily pronouncements and observations that are overwhelmingly official in nature.
In other Supreme Court news:
The court declined to hear an appeal that could have set a different standard for when employers must accommodate workers’ beliefs.
Jason Small was an electrician for Memphis Light, Gas and Water for more than a decade. His troubles began after an injury in 2013 required him to transfer jobs. Memphis Light offered him a position as a service dispatcher, but Small, a Jehovah’s Witness, worried the job would conflict with his desire to attend services on Wednesday evenings and Sundays and take part in community work on Saturdays.
Small sued in 2017, alleging religious discrimination. Both a federal district court and the Ohio-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit found that he lacked enough evidence for most of his claims.
The court declined to hear an appeal by Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was fighting a Connecticut court sanction in a defamation lawsuit brought by relatives of some of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Jones argued he should not have been sanctioned for exercising his free speech rights.