Court of Appeals: Trump Cannot Block Critics on Twitter

A federal appeals court in Manhattan says President Trump cannot block critics from his Twitter account, calling it "unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination."

In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users, because he uses his Twitter account "to conduct official business and to interact with the public." By preventing critics from accessing his feed, the president is barring them from participating in what...

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that President Trump violated the 1st Amendment by blocking some critics from access to his Twitter feed. The decision by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals might seem like poetic justice visited on a president who can dish it out but can’t take it. But as a matter of constitutional law, the ruling isn’t persuasive.

In 2017, a group of Twitter users who had been blocked from seeing and responding directly to Trump’s tweets filed suit in federal court in New York....