Hacker News Reader

Comment by sircastor | Hacker News Reader

Wasn't there a sort-of reverse issue a year or two ago, when the President was blocking people on twitter and a court ruled that he was violating their 1st amendment rights?

Is it exclusively because of his office? Could it be construed the other direction?

View on HN

> Is it exclusively because of his office?

Because of his office and the manner of use, yes, explicitly, under the limited public forum doctrine.

The First Amendment concerns the government's suppression of speech.

The POTUS is part of the US Government. Twitter is not.

So... no.

They only ruled that way because of the way Trump use(ed) his Twitter account - he used it to conduct government business, the white house themselves said his tweets are ‘official statements.’

https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/trump-tweets-officia...

>Could it be construed the other direction?

No.

Yes. If he weren’t in office, there would be no obligation

Yes, it's exclusively because of his using his Twitter account as an official outlet for government statements.

Trump has appealed the decision to SCOTUS, which is still considering whether or not hear it [1]. Given that Trump's Twitter account is now banned, I suspect SCOTUS will dismiss the motion as mooted.

[1] See https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/trump-v-knight-f... for the docket information.

He was an elected official, and elected officials cannot violate a citizen's first amendment rights.

Twitter is not an elected official.

This is not hard.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com