President Donald Trump violated the US constitution by blocking Twitter
users who disagree with him, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday in a case
closely watched for implications for online free speech.
Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said the blocking of Trump critics - which
prevent them from seeing and interacting with the president's tweets - violated
the free speech rights of those users guaranteed in the constitution's First
Amendment.
In a 75-page opinion, the New York federal judge said the users "were
indisputably blocked as a result of viewpoint discrimination" and that
this was "impermissible under the First Amendment."
The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of Twitter users
and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
The lawsuit contended that because Trump uses Twitter for a variety of
policy announcements, his Twitter account is "a designated public
forum" that cannot exclude people due to their political views.
The judge acknowledged that even though the president has certain free
speech rights, he cannot violate the rights of other Twitter users.
"While we must recognise, 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 criticised
him," she said in her opinion.
Buchwald stopped short of accepting the request for an injunction against
Trump and his social media aide, Dan Scavino, who was also named in the
complaint, saying she expected the White House to abide by her
"declaratory" ruling.
"Because no government official is above the law and because all
government officials are presumed to follow the law once the judiciary has said
what the law is, we must assume that the president and Scavino will remedy the
blocking we have held to be unconstitutional," she wrote.
* Sign up to Fin24's top news in your inbox: SUBSCRIBE TO FIN24 NEWSLETTER