Posted on 05/25/2018 5:09:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
US District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, a Clinton appointee, ruled that when Trump blocks Twitter trolls from his personal @realDonaldTrump account, he violates the First Amendment.
Trump is accused of unconstitutionally blocking unfavorable users, dubbed Twitter trolls, from his personal @realDonaldTrump account. The Twitter trolls sued Trump, arguing that when they were blocked, they could not participate in discussions with others in the comments sections on Trump’s tweets, and were therefore deprived of their First Amendment rights.
The fact that @realDonaldTrump is a personal account did not prevent Buchwald from opining that the sporadic use of the account for government purposes converted the tweets into government speech and the account into a public forum
“We hold that portions of the @realDonaldTrump account -- the ‘interactive space’ where Twitter users may directly engage with the content of the President’s tweets -- are properly analyzed under the ‘public forum’ doctrines set forth by the Supreme Court, that such space is a designated public forum, and that the blocking of the plaintiffs based on their political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment. In so holding, we reject the defendants’ contentions that the First Amendment does not apply in this case and that the President’s personal First Amendment interests supersede those of plaintiffs.”
The comprehensive 75-page decision considered public forum doctrine, government control, freedom of speech, viewpoint discrimination, and so forth. After thorough review and analysis, my takeaway was that it’s complicated. I could not say that I agreed with Buchwald’s analysis. But I also could not say that I disagreed. I needed to consult with a First Amendment expert.
Clark Neily is a respected Constitutional Law expert who has argued First Amendment issues in both federal and state courts. We discussed the Buchwald decision. Neily’s first impression was the same as mine: it’s complicated. Neily explained that the issues can be plausibly argued either way, but that ultimately Buchenwald was probably correct.
I asked Neily whether having a dedicated public forum account, @POTUS, bears any weight on the private @realDonaldTrump account, which is not dedicated solely to Presidential speech. He answered that it does not, noting that Trump frequently uses his private account “to prompt and participate in public-policy discussions,” agreeing with Buchwald’s analysis.
Neily defends that Trump is not obliged to speak to everyone and that not all speech by a President is subject to public participation. But he foresees an uphill battle for Trump’s legal team. Neily believes that the greatest hurdle for the President to overcome is the fact that Trump had a less-restrictive means of ignoring people he disliked: he could have muted them. Muting the trolls would have allowed the trolls to speak about Trump’s tweets, without Trump having to have seen them.
It’s complicated. I remain unpersuaded that a personal Twitter account, even when used by a President for some government-related statements, is converted into a government account and into a public forum, especially when official Presidential communications are released on the @POTUS government-owned account. I believe that significant arguments remain in this realm. But I agree that it’s a muddled issue in this case. I also do not accept that the trolls were aggrieved as extensively as they claim; they could have easily created new Twitter accounts and participated in @realDonaldTrump discussions via new accounts. Buchwald did not address this.
For those who disagree or are unsatisfied with Buchwald’s ruling, do not fret. Buchwald sits at the lowest Federal court level and is subject to appellate correction. We know that Trump hates Twitter trolls, so there is a good chance that he will contest this ruling. The next Trump v. Troll battle will be at the Court of Appeals, if Trump chooses to appeal.
So suddenly the first amendment counts in a private forum.
Why aren’t we burning these places to the ground?
Bots are another protected class, I guess.
This ruling will give FakeBook, Google, Youtube, and Twitter endless fits.
Goose meets gander.
I am absolutely certain that this judge invites all comers into her courtroom to debate her rulings and listens in reticent joy as they berate and harangue her over any and all perceived injustices. She must smile brightly as they call her all sorts of vile names.
Absolutely certain...
Yup. The right needs to adopt it as a primary tool to fight the censorship.
Naomi is one clueless twit. Is “unfriending” one of your “friends” on FB also a violation of the First Amendment? ROTFL. What an idiot. Where the hell do the ‘RATS find these so called, “judges”? Sitting around Starbucks with nothing to do? This bimbo needs to get a real job.
This means Twitter is now, officially, a public forum and therefore can’t BAN accounts for “hate speech” because it interferes with access to the President and/or other government officials.
Sue Twitter into oblivion
Second, I have had several Twitter accounts over the years. I have the ability to block anybody I want from seeing or commenting on my Tweets. I rarely use that function but it's there if I need it. I think if Free Republic had that feature, it would be a much more civil place.
So if this ruling stands, it could affect millions of other Twitter users as well.
With regard to the @realdonaldtrump account, I never even look at the replies to his tweets. That's because there are literally hundreds of Trump-hating losers who spend their waking hours on Twitter, poised and ready to respond instantly to any Trump tweet with canned responses that have absolutely nothing to do with the content of the tweet. All they appear to want to do is flood the zone with negative and hateful responses to every Trump tweet in an effort to drown out anybody that might have something useful or positive to say.
A lot of these replies could indeed be "bots" - software programmed to insert canned replies whenever the @realdonaldtrump account sends out a tweet.
It is thus impossible to have any kind of conversation in the thread of a Trump Tweet.
I enjoy this President’s DIRECT messaging. As long as the progressive platform known as Twitter does not censor this President, I am content he uses it to bypass the liar media.
I never read the leftist trolls that comment about his messages. They are not worth the time to read and follow.
That said, it would be useful to have a direct presidential messaging app without comments because comments are easy to take over by groups with an agenda and because comments provide unobjective information.
A direct WH survey of registered receivers of presidential direct messaging may sound like a good idea but it’s not. For example, all of Mexico could register and skew the responses to their agenda. I can think of no way for a user to be confirmed as a registered voter without privacy concerns. There are ways to verify if input to a survey was received and counted but that would be useless without confirmation of voter status and voter status can lead to political retribution.
at one stage, folks on reddit the Donald showed proof that the very same anti-Trump people were the first to reply to virtually every tweet he posted. it couldn’t have been coincidence.
So do I. Personally I have no use for Twitter, but if President Trump gets his message out, good.
So suddenly the first amendment counts in a private forum.
~~~~
It’s not.
Except there are two things different here.
First, It’s Donald Trump. He is president. If he blocks people he is effectively censoring them. This is normally his prerogative, as almost anyone would agree, except that he is a part of our government, and he blurs the lines between personal and public use of his twitter account. The first amendment protects people from having their speech (among other things) infringed upon by government.
Second, It’s Donald Trump. Lets face it. If it was Obama, this wouldn’t be happening.
Actually, I think the ruling is exceptionally narrow and applies to exactly one Twitter account.
Trump is free to have a purely personal account on which he can block anyone he wants.
The problem is the real Donald Trump account is used to put out the official position of the Administration, and is maintained by a taxpayer paid social media manager, Dan Scovino, who also puts out tweets obviously not authored by DJT.
I can't imagine this ruling going any other way.
Given that people can still see his tweets if they simply log off their blocked account, how can they be said to be censored?
Now, if Trump had somehow banned and deactivated other people’s accounts so they couldn’t use Twitter at all, that would be censorship. But he hasn’t done that, because that’s solely within Twitter’s prerogative.
I block them when I come upon them on.
The feed looks and smells much better when it is cleansed of them.
Well I’m playing devils advocate, because my personal feelings are that if it’s Trumps twitter account, he should get to moderate it.
But in this case, just saying that someone was censored here (by someone in government) but not censored there, probably isn’t good enough. If I can (as mayor) suppress protests in my downtown area no closer than 8 blocks from city hall, but tell them, hay, you can go protest the next town over, any judge is going to say that I’m censoring the right to gather and speak. Other than public safety issues, there is no reason people can’t protest city hall near city hall, if that’s a part of the point they are trying to make.
So if twitter trolls don’t get to address the President’s tweets in his tweets, as much as I dislike trolls, I tend to agree they are being censored there.
No, not at all.
Trump can censor his own account, even if it's on government property. Trump can't censor other people's accounts.
However Twitter can censor Trump's account and I'm sure that they will now that they have this phony ruling.
You might want to reread the first amendment.
You make the point well.
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