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Yes, this is why I love being an American, living in America: on Wednesday, May 23, 2018, a federal judge of New York City, Naomi Reice Buchwald, said in her ruling that President Trump is violating the U.S. Constitution by preventing certain Americans from viewing his tweets on @realDonaldTrump. President Trump has more than 52.2 million Twitter followers and has tweeted more than 37,600 times since he signed up for Twitter in March, 2009.

It is constitutional for public officials to mute the Twitter followers, but not to block them, 

Judge Buchwald said, “The social media platform 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.”  Buchwald’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.

One plaintiff indicated that she is aware of at least 150 verified Twitter users having been blocked by the president and at lest hundereds more unverified accounts that president has blocked. The blocks on the social media platform would prevent the plaintiffs from viewing or responding to the president’s tweets when logged into their ownTwitter accounts.

Buchwald said in her opinion, in italics, below:

“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,” …..”The answer to both questions is no.”

For Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald’s full ruling on Trump’s Twitter blocking, please Click Here.

“We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision and are considering our next steps,” a Justice Department spokesperson said. The Justice Department has 60 days to appeal the ruling.

“We’re pleased with the court’s decision, which reflects a careful application of core First Amendment principles to government censorship on a new communications platform,” the Knight Institute’s executive director Jameel Jaffer said in a prepared statement.

“The First Amendment prohibits government officials from suppressing speech on the basis of viewpoint. The court’s application of that principle here should guide all of the public officials who are communicating with their constituents through social media,” according to a senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute, Katie Fallow.

 

Photographed, gathered, written, and posted by Windermere Sun-Susan Sun Nunamaker
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