A federal judge in New York ruled May 23 that President Donald Trump cannot block users from his Twitter Inc. account for expressing political views with which he disagrees.
Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, said the president's Twitter account is a public forum and therefore blocking people based on their political opinions is a violation of the First Amendment.
"While we must recognize, and are sensitive to, the President's personal First Amendment rights, he cannot exercise those rights in a way that infringes the corresponding First Amendment rights of those who have criticized him," Buchwald wrote.
Buchwald's ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed in July 2017 by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of seven people whom President Trump had blocked from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account.
The government had argued that the blocked Twitter users could still access President Trump's tweets. While Buchwald agreed, she said that blocking those users still restricts "a real, albeit narrow, slice of speech."
Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute's executive director, applauded the decision, saying in a statement, "The president's practice of blocking critics on Twitter is pernicious and unconstitutional, and we hope this ruling will bring it to an end."
The individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit included a university professor in Maryland, a surgery resident in Nashville, Tenn., a songwriter in Seattle, Wash., a comedy writer in New York City, an author in Pittsburgh, Pa., a legal analyst in Washington, D.C., and a police officer in Houston.
