MAILMAN: Can The Local Dog Catcher Block Mean People On Twitter? It Depends…

MAILMAN: Can The Local Dog Catcher Block Mean People On Twitter? It Depends…

While I worked in President Trump’s White House, we faced no shortage of lawsuits, but one of the most memorable involved individuals who sued the president because he blocked them on Twitter. These blocked individuals, along with the entire public, could still see Trump’s tweets, but they couldn’t “comment” on his posts directly and thus couldn’t voice their #Resistance in precisely the way they hoped.

The Second Circuit said that Trump’s blocking posed a First Amendment problem. But the First Amendment only applies to government, not to private actors who block disfavored speech. And the president’s Twitter account was a personal account. Nevertheless, the court of appeals said that @RealDonaldTrump, though once operated as a private page, turned into a governmental forum once Trump took office and used it for official business.

The case drew attention from the Supreme Court, but fizzled after Donald Trump left office, meaning we don’t know whether the Supreme Court would have agreed with the appellate court’s analysis.

We thought we would have a better idea after they took cases this term with similar........

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