While most Americans want President Trump to stop tweeting, some Americans are now suing him for blocking them from seeing his tweets.
The Knight First Amendment Institute sent Trump a letter last month, asking him to unblock individuals he had blocked on Twitter. The institute said the blocking is suppressing free speech.
The Trump administration has not responded to its letter, so the institute filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in New York.
“President Trump’s Twitter account has become an important source of news and information about the government, and an important forum for speech by, to, or about the president,” said Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director, in a statement. “The First Amendment applies to this digital forum in the same way it applies to town halls and open school board meetings.”
The lawsuit, brought on behalf of seven critics who have been blocked, lists Trump, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and Director of Social Media and Assistant to the President Daniel Scavino as defendants.
The lawsuit also claims the blocking suppresses others’ rights.
“Other Twitter users, like Plaintiff Knight First Amendment Institute, that follow the @realDonaldTrump account… are now deprived of their right to read the speech of the dissenters who have been blocked,” the lawsuit says.
The Knight First Amendment Institute, a nonprofit at Columbia University, is asking that Trump’s blocking of the plaintiffs be declared unconstitutional; that the plaintiffs’ access to the president’s tweets be restored and that they not be blocked in the future because of their viewpoints; and that their legal fees be paid.
The lawsuit gives examples of tweets that got the plaintiffs blocked, including one by Brandon Neely, a police officer in Houston.
On June 12, 2017, Trump tweeted: “Congratulations! First new Coal Mine of Trump Era Opens in Pennsylvania.”
Mr. Neely replied: “Congrats and now black lung won’t be covered under #TrumpCare.” According to the suit, Neely saw that he was blocked from the @realDonaldTrump account the next day.
That the lawsuit centers on Trump’s personal Twitter account and not the official presidential account, @POTUS, might make a difference, according to a legal expert on public forum laws.
“The POTUS account is unmistakably designated as a medium of the president of the United States,” said Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware, in a phone interview Tuesday. “But something with Trump’s name on it is pretty unmistakably his own forum.”
“I would compare it to having someone not answer your calls,” Francke said. “There’s somebody you want to talk to at some influential organization, they screen out your emails and don’t answer your calls. It’s frustrating,” but he said @realDonaldTrump is not necessarily an official forum despite the White House’s declarations.
A White House spokeswoman has not yet returned this publication’s request for comment. A Twitter spokeswoman said the company has no comment.
A Politico/Morning Consult Poll, released last month, showed that 59 percent of U.S. voters thought Trump’s Twitter use is a bad thing.
Yet Trump has vowed to tweet away.
“The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out,” Trump tweeted July 1.
