{"id":119772,"date":"2021-04-05T15:35:33","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T15:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/?p=119772"},"modified":"2021-04-05T15:35:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T15:35:33","slug":"supreme-court-dismisses-as-moot-case-questioning-donald-trumps-blocking-of-critics-on-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/supreme-court-dismisses-as-moot-case-questioning-donald-trumps-blocking-of-critics-on-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court dismisses as moot case questioning Donald Trump’s blocking of critics on Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2013 Now-former\u00a0President Donald Trump may have had about\u00a089 million followers on Twitter before the platform suspended his account, but the Supreme Court apparently isn’t interested in how\u00a0he got along \u2013<\/strong>or didn’t<\/strong>\u2013<\/strong>with some of them.<\/p>\n

The justices on Monday dismissed as moot a high-profile case\u00a0about\u00a0whether Trump\u00a0was on solid legal ground when he blocked several of his critics on his once-favorite social media website. A federal appeals court ruling found Trump’s actions violated\u00a0<\/strong>the First Amendment, and the court tossed that decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both sides in the suit had agreed the\u00a0case\u00a0is moot\u00a0since Trump is no longer president and no longer has access to Twitter. The company permanently suspended his account in January following the riot\u00a0at the U.S. Capitol that took place following a rally the then-president held near the White House.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the Twitter users that had been blocked had nevertheless asked the court to leave the ruling in place as a guidepost for future government officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This case was about a very simple principle that is foundational to our democracy: Public officials can\u2019t bar people from public forums simply because they disagree with them,”\u00a0said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, which represented the blocked users.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we would have liked the Supreme Court to leave the Second Circuit\u2019s ruling on the books, we\u2019re gratified that the appeals court\u2019s reasoning has already been adopted by other courts, and we\u2019re confident it will continue to shape the way that public officials use social media,” Jaffer said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Trump aide did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court did not issue an opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas, however,\u00a0wrote a concurring opinion raising broader questions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Applying old doctrines to new digital platforms is rarely straightforward,” Thomas wrote. “Respondents have a point, for example, that some aspects of Mr. Trump\u2019s account resemble a constitutionally protected public forum. But it seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it.”<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0invited the court battle in\u00a02017 by blocking some Twitter users\u00a0from following his popular account, @realDonaldTrump. Blocked users can’t\u00a0<\/strong>read tweets, respond to them directly, or contribute to the comment threads. Seven users went to court, charging that Trump<\/strong>was seeking to “suppress dissent.”<\/p>\n

A\u00a0federal district court ruled against\u00a0him\u00a0in 2018, and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit followed suit in 2019. In 2020, the full appeals court declined to rehear the case.<\/p>\n

“These tweets are published by a public official clothed with the authority of the state using social media as a tool of governance and as an official channel of communication on an interactive public platform,” appeals court Judge Barrington Parker wrote.<\/p>\n

Then-Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, <\/strong>who left the post when President Joe Biden took office,\u00a0had urged the justices to take up Trump’s appeal. He noted<\/strong>the Twitter\u00a0account was created in 2009\u00a0when Trump was a private citizen and lived on as a source of both personal and official pronouncements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The president uses his account to speak to the public, not to give members of the public a forum to speak to him and among themselves,” Wall wrote.<\/p>\n

“Denying him the power to exclude third parties\u2019 accounts from his personal account \u2013 a power that every other owner of a Twitter account possesses \u2013 would deter holders of his office from using new technology to efficiently communicate to a broad public audience.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In this Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, file photo, President Donald Trump waves as he boards Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, en route to his Mar-a-Lago Florida Resort, just hours before Joe Biden's inauguration. (Photo: Alex Brandon, AP)<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0tweeted\u00a0regularly\u00a0from the\u00a0@realDonaldTrump account, sometimes more than 100 times a day.\u00a0<\/strong>Since establishing the account, he had tweeted more than 58,000 times\u00a0\u2013 an average of about 14\u00a0per day.\u00a0Typical of late\u00a0were\u00a0his baseless allegations of election fraud, a theme he began following President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012 and amplified after losing to Biden.\u00a0The Trump\u00a0White House tweeted less often from\u00a0the\u00a0@POTUS account, an account that belongs to the U.S.\u00a0government rather than Trump and which has been transferred to the Biden administration.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tweet: <\/strong>Trump permanently banned from Twitter over risk he could incite violence<\/span><\/p>\n

The Justice Department acknowledged that Trump had\u00a0used\u00a0the\u00a0@realDonaldTrump account for government business but said the appeals court failed to understand that blocking followers is his personal decision.<\/p>\n

“By ignoring the critical distinction between the president\u2019s (sometimes) official statements on Twitter and his always personal decision to block respondents from his own account, the opinion blurs the line between state action and private conduct,” Wall had\u00a0said in asking the Supreme Court to hear the case.<\/p>\n

One of the seven Twitter users who brought the case in 2017 was Rebecca Buckwalter of Washington, D.C. After Trump tweeted, “Sorry folks, but if I would have relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS washpost or\u00a0nytimes, I would have had ZERO chance winning WH,\u201d she replied:\u00a0\u201cTo be fair you didn\u2019t win the WH: Russia won it for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the 2018 district court ruling, the White House unblocked the seven people who brought the case, along with others blocked because of their viewpoints. But it did not unblock those who could not specify the tweet that caused Trump to block them, or those blocked before he became president.<\/p>\n

Source: Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2013 Now-former\u00a0President Donald Trump may have had<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":119771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23055],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nSupreme Court dismisses as moot case questioning Donald Trump's blocking of critics on Twitter - Pre Coin News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/supreme-court-dismisses-as-moot-case-questioning-donald-trumps-blocking-of-critics-on-twitter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Supreme Court dismisses as moot case questioning Donald Trump's blocking of critics on Twitter - Pre Coin News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2013 Now-former\u00a0President Donald Trump may have had\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/supreme-court-dismisses-as-moot-case-questioning-donald-trumps-blocking-of-critics-on-twitter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pre Coin News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-04-05T15:35:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mediabest\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cfntalkfotoaa7e541d-70a9-4935-a1b2-02312e9b3ffb-AP_Skilled-Worker-Visas-Lawsuit.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"mediabest\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/supreme-court-dismisses-as-moot-case-questioning-donald-trumps-blocking-of-critics-on-twitter\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/supreme-court-dismisses-as-moot-case-questioning-donald-trumps-blocking-of-critics-on-twitter\/\",\"name\":\"Supreme Court dismisses as moot case questioning Donald Trump's blocking of critics on Twitter - 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