The US Supreme Court has wiped away a lower court opinion holding that then-President Donald Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked followers from his Twitter account.
Ruling on Monday, April 5, The Supreme court dismissed the case because Trump is not in office so there is no longer a live case or any controversy.
Trump created his Twitter account in 2009, and in May and June of 2017, while serving as President of the US he blocked seven individuals who had expressed displeasure with him.
Lawyers from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sued on behalf of the seven individuals, arguing Trump’s action violated their First Amendment rights.
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Courts are barring public officials from blocking critics from their social media accounts.
By Jameel Jaffer and Katie Fallow
Mr. Jaffer is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Ms. Fallow is a senior staff attorney there.
April 7, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
Credit.Rose Wong
With Donald Trump gone from the White House and banned from the major social media platforms, the Supreme Court on Monday finally brought an end to the long-running litigation over the former president’s practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account, declaring the case to be moot.
The lawsuit, which we and our colleagues filed six months into Mr. Trump’s tenure, will likely be remembered as an artifact of the Trump era a collision of the First Amendment, the pathologies of social media and a thin-skinned, attention-craving demagogue indifferent to constitutional limits on his authority.
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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas appeared ready to take on Big Tech tyranny in an opinion regarding former President Donald Trump’s Twitter practices.
Thomas wrote a concurring opinion for a recent court order to remand the case of Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, formerly Trump v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Thomas raised multiple concerns about the power of online platforms and their “right to exclude.”
The case revolved around the question of whether Trump could block other users on Twitter, or if that action violated the First Amendment. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that Trump “engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination” by blocking users on the platform, because the “interactive space” on Trump’s Twitter account was a “public forum.”
The US Supreme Court has wiped away a lower court opinion holding that then-President Donald Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked followers from his Twitter account.
Ruling on Monday, April 5, The Supreme court dismissed the case because Trump is not in office so there is no longer a live case or any controversy. Trump created his Twitter account in 2009, and in May and June of 2017, while serving as President of the US he blocked seven individuals who had expressed displeasure with him.
Lawyers from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sued on behalf of the seven individuals, arguing Trump s action violated their First Amendment rights.