Blocked Twitter users sue president

Say his account is a public forum, by blocking them he is infringing on fundamental rights

Agroup of Twitter users blocked by President Donald Trump sued him and two top White House aides on Tuesday, arguing that his account amounts to a public forum that he, as a government official, cannot bar people from.

The blocked Twitter users, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, raised cutting-edge issues about how the Constitution applies to the social-media era. They say Trump cannot bar people from engaging with his account because they expressed opinions he did not like such as mocking or criticising him.

“The @realDonaldTrump account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides, and exchange views with one another,” the suit said.

By blocking people from reading his tweets, or from viewing and replying to message chains based on them, Trump is violating their First Amendment rights because they expressed views he did not like, the lawsuit argued.

Several theories

It offered several theories to back that notion.

Filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit also names Sean Spicer, White House press secretary, and Dan Scavino, Trump’s director of social media, as defendants.

It seeks a declaration that Trump’s blocking of the plaintiffs was unconstitutional, an injunction requiring him to unblock them and prohibiting him from blocking others for the views they express, and legal fees.

News of the letter, and the novel legal arguments it advanced, touched off a debate among legal specialists. The sceptics argued, among other things, that Trump’s account was personal, not official.