ADVERTISEMENT

Trump’s Twitter Blocking Challenged in New Free Speech Suit

Trump’s Twitter Blocking Is Center of New Free Speech Lawsuit

President Donald Trump was accused of continuing to illegally block critics on Twitter two years after a judge ruled that his account on the social-media platform is a “public forum” and that silencing of detractors was a violation of the First Amendment.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of five people who still can’t access the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account, which has 84.4 million followers. The complaint also names Trump’s deputy chief of staff for communications, Daniel Scavino.

“The president lost this battle more than two years ago when a federal court held that his practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account violates the First Amendment,” Katie Fallow, a senior staff attorney at the New York-based institute, said in a statement. “It shouldn’t take another lawsuit to get the president to respect the rule of law and to stop blocking people simply because he doesn’t like what they’re posting.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Trump uses Twitter regularly to promote his policy agenda, retweet supporters and positive news articles, and to attack his political enemies. On Thursday he used his account to suggest that Election Day be delayed, saying without evidence that mail-in voting will lead to fraud.

The plaintiffs in the new case include freelance writer and blogger Ellen Brodsky, caregiver Darragh Burgess and Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. Megan Ackerman, a digital specialist with the American Federation of Teachers, also sued, as did Elizabeth West, a New York actor.

The free speech group alleges the White House unblocked the plaintiffs from the first lawsuit as well as dozens of others who were blocked on the basis of their viewpoint after they were flagged by the organization.

But it says the White House has refused to unblock Twitter critics who fall into two categories: those who can’t pinpoint the tweet that provoked Trump to block them and those who were blocked before the president took office. The new lawsuit will focus mostly on those categories, the group said.

“Because of their criticism of the President, they have been prevented or impeded from viewing the President’s tweets, from replying to those tweets, from viewing the discussions associated with the tweets, and from participating in those discussions,” the group said.

The Twitter users who sued are seeking a court order that would force Trump to unblock everyone except where he can “justify the blocking on an individualized basis.”

The case is Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University v. Trump., 20-cv-05958, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.