Court Rules Trump Tweets Are First Amendment Protected, But That Does Not Mean That Yours Are
Tonight many keyboards are firing away at full speed about how a court's ruling that Donald Trump's Twitter messages are First Amendment protected means that Twitter will have to finally be an open and free speech zone. While this sounds like a nice idea, in fact the opposite is true. The court found that Trump's tweets are special because they are a communication from government . This is what gives us First Amendment protections in our replies to them. U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled that comments on the president’s account, and those of other government officials, were public forums, and that blocking Twitter users for their views violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment of Constitution. Eugene Volokh, a University of California Los Angeles School of Law professor who specializes in First Amendment issues, said the decision’s effect would reach beyond Trump. “It would end up applying to a wide range of governmen...