President Donald Trump uses a mobile phone during a roundtable discussion on reopening small businesses in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, USA, June 18, 2020.
Leah Millis | Reuters
The White House on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that said President Donald Trump’s practice dismissed critics on Twitter from the First Amendment to the Constitution.
The request to the Supreme Court renews a debate over the nature of the president’s use of social media.
A federal appeals court ruled last year that the president used his account as “an official channel of communication.” On that basis, the unanimous three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Trump had effectively created a public forum, and was banning users from blocking it based on their political views.
The full appeals court decided in March to reconsider that decision.
But in a petition filed before the judiciary, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Wall told the court that the appeals panel failed to properly distinguish the president’s official communication on Twitter from the personal nature of his decision to blocking users where he disagreed.
“President Trump’s ability to use the features of his personal Twitter account, including the blocking feature, is independent of his presidential office,” Wall wrote. “Blocking third-party accounts from interacting with the @realDonaldTrump account is a purely personal action that does not create a ‘right or privilege created by the state.'”
Wall said Trump’s decision to block users did not prevent them from criticizing the president, noting that they could still view his tweets while not logged in to the social media platform and post screenshots of the messages.
Wall said the higher court ruling would “limit” the ability of public officials to isolate their social media accounts from harassment, trolling or hate speech without invasive judicial oversight. ”
The case was originally brought in 2017 by The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which sued on behalf of seven users who blocked the president after responding to one or more of his tweets.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight Institute, said in a statement on Thursday that the case “stands for a principle that is fundamental to our democracy and in principle synonymous with the First Amendment: Government officials can not exclude people from public forums simply because they do not agree with their political views. “
“The Supreme Court must reject the White House petition and leave the careful and well-reasoned decision of the higher appeal in place,” Jaffer said.
If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, it would probably do so in its term in early October. A decision would come by June, months after the November game between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden.
Although Trump is not the first president to use social media, he has used it with more enthusiasm than his predecessors, and often used his Twitter feed to signal political positions, end officials and threaten military action.
The case is Trump v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, No. 20-197.
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