Trump keeps blocking tweets: suit

He can dish it out, but he can’t take it.

That’s what free speech lawyers at Columbia University said Friday about President Trump’s decision to continue to bar critics from his caustic Twitter account, even after a federal court ruled two years ago that the Twittererin-chief violated the First Amendment by blocking access to a public forum.

Lawyers at Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute filed a lawsuit Friday against the president on behalf of several Trump detractors who said they were blocked from Trump’s Twitter feed — @realDonaldTrump — because of their political views.

The institute filed a lawsuit in 2017 on behalf of seven people who had been blocked from the account. In May 2018, a federal judge ruled the action violates the First Amendment.

In 2019, a federal appeals court unanimously upheld the lower court’s ruling, and in March of this year, the court rejected a request by the Trump administration for a full-court review. The administration has until August 20 to seek a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The White House has unblocked the plaintiffs from the original suit and it has also, at the request of the Knight Institute, unblocked dozens of other individuals who were blocked on the basis of their viewpoints.

But according to the new lawsuit, Trump officials have refused to unblock two categories of Twitter users: those who can’t specify the tweet that got them blocked, and those blocked before Trump (inset) took office.

“It shouldn’t take another lawsuit to get the president to respect the rule of law and to stop blocking people simply because he doesn’t like what they’re posting,” said Katie Fallow, senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute..