The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sued President Donald Trump in 2017 after he blocked even people on Twitter. Photo by Shawn Thew/UPI |
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Aug. 21 (UPI) -- The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court's decision prohibiting President Donald Trump from blocking critics on Twitter.
In a petition filed with the Supreme Court on Thursday, acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall asked the justices to overturn the Second Circuit court's decision, saying it misapplied the First Amendment when it ruled that the president's actions to block critics on the social media platform went against the Constitution.
Trump, who created his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account prior to being president in 2009, has more than 85 million followers and has frequently used the account to announce official actions and policies.
In July 2017, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a lawsuit against Trump for blocking seven people on Twitter who criticized his presidency and policies, arguing his account is a "public forum" under the First Amendment and that no member of the public can be excluded from the space based on their views or opinions.
The court ruled in the Knight Institute's favor -- a ruling that was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in July of last year.
In the petition on Thursday, Wall argued that Trump's personal Twitter account does not "give members of the public a forum to speak to him and among themselves."
Wall also said the court wrongly concluded that the account's tweets and its interactive features were government speech. The blocking feature of Twitter is available to all users and Trump's right to block any other user from his private account is independent of his public office, he said.
"Twitter could eliminate the blocking function at any time, and the president ... would be powerless to block anyone," he wrote.
Wall also argued the Supreme Court, and not a lower court, "should decide where to draw a line between the president's personal decisions and official conduct."
The Knight Institute balked at the petition on Thursday, calling on the Supreme Court to reject it and "leave the appeals court's careful and well-reasoned decision in place."
"This case stands for a principle that is fundamental to our democracy and basically synonymous with the First Amendment: Government officials can't exclude people from public forums simply because they disagree with their political views," Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute's executive director, said in a statement.
