Trump’s blocking of critical Twitter users violates the First Amendment

The New York Times reports that a federal judge in Manhattan has ruled that President Trump’s practice of blocking Twitter users who are critical of him from seeing his posts on the social media platform violates the First Amendment.

The ruling came in a case brought by seven Twitter users who had been blocked by the @realDonaldTrump account after they criticized the president.

The plaintiffs, who were joined in the suit by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia Univerity, claimed that Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed is an official government account and that blocking users from following it was a violation of their First Amendment rights.