Trump’s Twitter blocking violates First Amendment, court rules

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto/Getty Images)

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Donald Trump's use of the Twitter block button violated the First Amendment. The ruling has implications for any government official-federal, state, or local-who uses Twitter or other social media platforms to communicate with the public.

The block button is a key weapon in Twitter's war against trolling and harassment, and Trump has used it since long before he was president. But last year, a group of Twitter users who had been blocked by Trump's @realDonaldTrump account sued, arguing that the use of the feature by a public official violates the First Amendment.

The main effect of blocking someone is that that person's tweets no longer show up in the blocker's timeline. No one disputes that Trump has the right to do that if he wants. But blocking someone also works in the other direction: if Trump blocks another user, that user can't see Trump's tweets and (as a consequence) can't reply to them. And that, ruled Naomi Buchwald, a New York Federal judge, raises a constitutional problem.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments