The White House is asking the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision that restricts President Donald Trump from blocking followers on Twitter.
The president’s legal team seeks to define the executive authority to block followers after a lower court ruled Trump’s Twitter account is “an official channel of communication” and therefore cannot block Americans from seeing his tweets.
Three judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that blocking Twitter followers is a violation of their First Amendment rights of free speech. A full appeals court declined to hear the case in March, and the White House now is fighting the ruling to the nation’s highest court.
Read more at NEWSMAX.
{Matzav.com}
I don’t use twitter, but these discussion, going back a long time now, are very confused. Is the claim being made that the President has blocked people from seeing his tweets, or is the problem that the President has blocked people from commenting on his tweets?
The NEWSMAX link claims neither is true. Anyone can see the tweets. And anyone comment on the tweets (the judge made the highly specious claim that blocking prevented people from commenting – it does not prevent anyone from commenting elsewhere). It is only that they are blocked from posting the comment on the President’s account.
I don’t see how this is different than any news conference the President holds. The President chooses who speaks, who asks questions, etc. And he certainly does not have to put up with personal insults. I have finally found an article detailing the seven people who brought the suit for being blocked. At least 5 were provocatively open personal insults. the other two were mildly provocative open insults, but with hash-tags that that implied much more insults.