US Court rules President Trump can’t block people from viewing his Twitter feed

WASHINGTON, May 24 (APP):A US federal district court judge has ruled that President Trump cannot block people from viewing his Twitter feed as it
violates the First Amendment of the Constitution that protects Americans right to protest and the right to political dissent.
Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, gave her ruling on a lawsuit
filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which had filed the lawsuit on behalf of the seven people.
These people were blocked from the @realDonaldTrump account because of opinions they expressed in reply tweets, according to a report by the online English news magazine, The Hill.
However, the judge did not order the President and the White House social media director to unblock the individual
plaintiffs in the case or prohibit them from blocking others from the account based on their views as the plaintiffs’ had asked.
The report quoted the judge as saying that the declaratory judgement was sufficient and “we must assume that the
President and Scavino will remedy the blocking we have held to be unconstitutional”.
Judge Buchwald wrote in her ruling, as reported by the magazine, that President Trump’s Twitter account was a public
forum and blocking people who reply to his tweets with differing opinions constitutes viewpoint discrimination, which violates the
First Amendment.
The judge, who was appointed by for President Bill Clinton, did not agree with President Trump’s argument that the First Amendment does not apply in this case and that the president’s personal First Amendment interests supersede those of the
plaintiffs. The former first lady, Hillary Clinton lost President Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
In her ruling that was spanned over 75 pages, the Judge said that President Trump could have ignored his opponents’
reply tweets.
“No First Amendment harm arises when a government’s ‘challenged conduct’ is simply to ignore the [speaker], as the
Supreme Court has affirmed that it is free to do,”she wrote as reported by the magazine. “Stated otherwise, ‘a person’s right
to speak is not infringed when government simply ignores that person while listening to others,’ or when the government
“amplifies” the voice of one speaker over those of others.”