{"id":12247,"date":"2018-05-26T19:05:36","date_gmt":"2018-05-26T19:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=12247"},"modified":"2018-05-27T19:10:09","modified_gmt":"2018-05-27T19:10:09","slug":"federal-judge-rules-trumps-twitter-account-is-a-public-forum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/federal-judge-rules-trumps-twitter-account-is-a-public-forum\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal judge rules Trump’s Twitter account is a public forum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clay Calvert<\/a>, University of Florida<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A federal judge in New York has ruled that President Donald Trump cannot block people<\/a> from following or viewing his @realDonaldTrump<\/a> Twitter account. While the case will likely be appealed and could reach the U.S. Supreme Court, the decision is a resounding victory for the First Amendment<\/a> right of citizens to speak to and disagree with government officials in the social media era.<\/p>\n

The judge\u2019s ruling is not a surprise to me, as director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project<\/a> at the University of Florida<\/a>. That\u2019s because it is grounded in the well-established principles<\/a> of protecting political speech<\/a> and barring government discrimination<\/a> against people engaged in public discourse<\/a> based on their viewpoints<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Sure enough, the judge found that Trump blocked Twitter followers from his account \u201cindisputably \u2026 [as] a result of viewpoint discrimination<\/a>.\u201d In other words, Trump cannot block people simply because they criticize him or his policies.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

That issue was never really in question in this case, though. The main debate was whether the president\u2019s personal Twitter account was a public forum<\/a> governed by the First Amendment. More traditional public forums are physical places owned by the government, such as sidewalks, parks and auditoriums. Peaceful public speech and demonstrations in those venues cannot be stopped based on what is being said without a compelling government interest<\/a>. Twitter, however, is not a real-world space. And it\u2019s run by a private company.<\/p>\n

The judge\u2019s ruling found, however, that the company has less control over the @realDonaldTrump account than Trump himself and White House social media director Dan Scavino<\/a> \u2013 also a public official. Their power includes the ability to block people from seeing the account\u2019s tweets, and \u201cfrom participating in the interactive space associated with the tweets<\/a>,\u201d in the form of replies and comments on Twitter\u2019s platform.<\/p>\n

Also key was the fact that the @realDonaldTrump account is used for governmental purposes. Specifically, the judge found that \u201cthe President presents the @realDonaldTrump account as being a presidential account<\/a> as opposed to a personal account and, more importantly, uses the account to take actions that can be taken only by the President as President\u201d \u2013 such as announcing the appointments and terminations of government officials.<\/p>\n

\"TheThis ruling brings the Supreme Court\u2019s longstanding free speech doctrine into the social media era.<\/p>\n

Clay Calvert<\/a>, Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communication, University of Florida<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clay Calvert, University of Florida A federal judge in New York has ruled that President Donald Trump cannot block people from following or viewing his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account. While the case will likely be appealed and could reach the U.S. Supreme Court, the decision is a resounding victory for the First Amendment right of citizens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3410],"tags":[1741,2254,1614,2562,4181,2197,702,4424,486,4552],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12249,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247\/revisions\/12249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}