If President Trump won\u2019t delete his Twitter account, Americans should at least be able to send him critical messages through the platform.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the argument in a letter sent by lawyers on behalf of individuals whose Twitter accounts have been \u201cblocked\u201d by Trump\u2019s twitter account. A team from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University agreed to represent the blocked users.<\/p>\n
The letter asks the president to unblock the followers, saying the Constitution prohibits him from denying Americans the ability to openly criticize or mock him:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis Twitter account operates as a \u2018designated public forum\u2019 for First Amendment purposes, and accordingly the viewpoint-based blocking of our clients is unconstitutional,\u201d the letter said. \u201cWe ask that you unblock them and any others who have been blocked for similar reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
The foundation\u2019s letter specifically mentions Trump\u2019s personal twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, which currently has 38.1 million followers. That account blocked two users cited in the letter, who posted critical tweets directed at Trump\u2019s account. The president also inherited the @potus account from President Obama.<\/p>\n
The foundation acknowledges the obvious: the Constitution was written before Twitter, social media, or the Internet itself were even a spark in someone\u2019s imagination. But they argue Trump\u2019s tweets rise to the level of statements made by a public official, and by blocking users, Trump is preventing citizens from having access to, or interacting with, those public statements. That\u2019s because when a user is blocked on Twitter, they can no longer see a user\u2019s account, or comment on tweets the user has made. The block function was originally put in place by Twitter\u2019s administrator\u2019s to help protect users who are being harassed. But this is the first time someone has flipped the script legally, arguing that the privacy measure is actually a restriction on free speech.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a context in which the Constitution precludes the President from making up his own rules,\u201d said Knight Institute executive director said Jameel Jaffer in a statement.\u00a0\u201cThough the architects of the Constitution surely didn\u2019t contemplate presidential Twitter accounts, they understood that the President must not be allowed to banish views from public discourse simply because he finds them objectionable.\u00a0Having opened this forum to all comers, the President can\u2019t exclude people from it merely because he dislikes what they\u2019re saying.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If President Trump won\u2019t delete his Twitter account, Americans should at least be able to send him critical messages through the platform. That\u2019s the argument in a letter sent by lawyers on behalf of individuals whose Twitter accounts have been \u201cblocked\u201d by Trump\u2019s twitter account. A team from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}