Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. (TX Attorney General)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has unblocked on Twitter the nine Texans who sued him after they say they were unconstitutionally blocked for criticizing him or his policies on the social media platform.
In a lawsuit filed in April, a group of Texans said being blocked from viewing Paxton’s tweets from his @KenPaxtonTX account was a violation of the First Amendment because it limited the rights of people to participate in a public forum and access statements made by the public official.
The ACLU of Texas and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University represented the Texans in their lawsuit. According to their statements from a Thursday press release, Paxton has unblocked the nine Texans in the “ongoing lawsuit challenging Paxton’s practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account.”
Paxton unblocks nine Texans on Twitter after lawsuit claiming he violated First Amendment rights
Megan Menchaca, The Texas Tribune
May 6, 2021
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FILE Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks at a news conference as District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, left, and other state attorneys general look on, outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Sept. 9, 2019. In a petition filed on Oct. 31 in Texas state court of Travis County, Google, along with its parent company Alphabet, sought a protective order against Paxton, who is spearheading the multistate antitrust investigation into the company. (Al Drago/The New York Times)Al Drago/NYT
Posted By Sanford Nowlin on Fri, May 7, 2021 at 10:31 AM click to enlarge Courtesy Photo / Texas Attorney General s Office Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was slapped with a lawsuit last month for blocking people from his official Twitter account. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is the latest conservative politician to face legal blowback for trying to shut down criticism on his Twitter feed. The embattled Republican AG has unblocked nine people from his official Twitter account after they filed a lawsuit alleging that he violated their First Amendment rights, the Texas Tribune reports. The group all Texans sued Paxton in April, arguing that by blocking them from his @KenPaxtonTX account he d hampered their rights to access
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