What a time to be alive.
A federal judge in New York City ruled Monday that Trump cannot block critics on his personal Twitter account.
Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ruled disallowing citizens to view the president’s tweets makes blocking users on the “public forum” unconstitutional. The ruling seems to suggest any public official could be held to the same standard and also opens up a potentially fun question about the rights of users supressed for their political beleifs in a so-deemed “public forum.”
The Columbia University Knight Institute, a First Amendment advocacy organization, sued Trump last year.
NBC reports:
Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said in her ruling that Trump is violating the U.S. Constitution by preventing certain Americans from viewing his tweets on @realDonaldTrump.The social media platform, Buchwald said, is a “designated public forum” from which Trump cannot exclude individual plaintiffs. She rejected an argument by the Justice Department that the president had a right to block Twitter followers because of his “associational freedoms.”The judge’s ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed last July by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, as well as seven other plaintiffs whom Trump had personally blocked from following him.The plaintiffs included a journalist who had tweeted at Trump that “Russian won” the presidential election for him, a surgeon and a Texas police officer.One plaintiff told CNBC that she is aware of at least 150 verified Twitter users who have been blocked by the president and that there are at least hundreds more unverified accounts that Trump has blocked.The blocks on the social media platform prevented the plaintiffs from viewing or responding to the president’s tweets when logged into their own Twitter accounts. Trump is an avid Twitter user and routinely makes news, often several times in a single day, with his posts….”This case requires us to consider whether a public official may, consistent with the First Amendment, ‘block’ a person from his Twitter account in response to the political views that person has expressed, and whether the analysis differs because that public official is the President of the United States,” Buchwald said said in her opinion.”The answer to both questions is no.”
Judge Buchwald said plaintiffs lacked standing to sue White House Press Secretary, Sarah Sanders along with Hope Hicks who recently resigned from the White House.
The DOJ disagrees with the ruling and has 60 days to appeal. “We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision and are considering our next steps,” as DOJ spokesman told NBC.
Related to the ruling or other news, I’m not sure, but this morning Trump tweeted:
Judge Buchwald’s order:
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER: granting in part and denying in part 34 Motion for Summary Judgment; granting in part and denying in part 42 Motion for Summary Judgment. We conclude that we have jurisdiction to entertain this dispute. Plaintiffs have established legal injuries that are traceable to the conduct of the President and Daniel Scavino and, despite defendants’ suggestions to the contrary, their injuries are redressable by a favorable judicial declaration. Plaintiffs lack standing, however, to sue Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is dismissed as a defendant. Hope Hicks is also dismissed as a defendant, in light of her resignation as White House Communications Director. Turning to the merits of plaintiffs’ First Amendment claim, we hold that the speech in which they seek to engage is protected by the First Amendment and that the President and Scavino exert governmental control over certain aspects of the @realDonaldTrump account, including the interactive space of the tweets sent from the account. That interactive space is susceptible to analysis under the Supreme Court’s forum doctrines, and is properly characterized as a designated public forum. The viewpoint-based exclusion of the individual plaintiffs from that designated public forum is proscribed by the First Amendment and cannot be justified by the President’s personal First Amendment interests. In sum, defendants’ motion for summary judgment is granted in part and denied in part, and plaintiffs’ cross-motion for summary judgment is granted in part and denied in part. The Clerk of the Court is directed to terminate the motions pending at docket entries 34 and 42. SO ORDERED. (Signed by Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald on 5/23/2018) (ama) (Entered: 05/23/2018)
Full judgement here:
2018.05.23 Order on Motions for Summary Judgment by Legal Insurrection on Scribd
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