The 1st Amendment  

Freedom of Speech  
 
 

A person holding a megaphone exercising the Freedom of Speech 

 
 
 
The government may not censor the people's way of 
expression through speech 
   
Twitter Users Block Trump Seek Reprieve, Citing First Amendment

By: Charlie Savage (June 6,2017) New York Times

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for Twitter users blocked by President Trump after they
criticized or mocked him are asking him to reverse the moves, arguing that the
Constitution bars him from blocking people on the social media service.

The request raises novel legal issues stemming from Mr. Trump’s use of his Twitter
account, ​@realDonaldTrump​, to make statements about public policy. In a letter sent to
Mr. Trump on Tuesday, lawyers for several users he has blocked argued that his account
was a “public forum” from which the government may not constitutionally exclude
people because it disagrees with views they have expressed.

“This Twitter account operates as a ‘designated public forum’ for First Amendment
purposes, and accordingly the viewpoint-based blocking of our clients is
unconstitutional,” the letter said. “We ask that you unblock them and any others who
have been blocked for similar reasons.”

The letter implies that if the Trump administration does not comply, a lawsuit may
follow. The blocked Twitter users are represented by the Knight First Amendment
Institute at Columbia University, whose executive director, Jameel Jaffer, said in a
statement that Mr. Trump did not have a right to exclude his critics from engaging with
his posts.

“Though the architects of the Constitution surely didn’t contemplate presidential

Twitter accounts, they understood that the president must not be allowed to banish
views from public discourse simply because he finds them objectionable,” Mr. Jaffer
said. “Having opened this forum to all comers, the president can’t exclude people from it
merely because he dislikes what they’re saying.”

The letter said that Mr. Trump’s blocking of users on Twitter suppressed their
free-expression rights in several ways. Users of blocked accounts cannot follow Mr.
Trump and they have difficulty viewing his posts, finding them through Twitter’s search
function, learning which accounts follow the president and participating in
comment-thread discussions about his tweets, it said.

One of the Twitter users the letter said Mr. Trump had blocked is Holly O’Reilly, whose
account is ​@AynRandPaulRyan​.

On May 28, Mr. Trump posted a message about the British prime minister being angry
that information about a suspect in the Manchester terrorist attack that Britain had
given to the United States had been leaked. Ms. O’Reilly, who identified herself as an
organizer of the June 3 March for Truth rally, posted a series of responses to Mr.
Trump’s tweet that appeared beneath it, mocking him and promoting the protest, which
was held in several locations.

“YOU ARE THE LEAKER, you bloody idiot. God, you’re embarrassing,” her first
message said. She followed it up with several others, including a moving GIF image of
Pope Francis glancing at Mr. Trump with an uncomfortable expression, above which she
wrote, “This is pretty much how the whole world sees you.”

In the letter, Ms. O’Reilly’s lawyers wrote: “Of course, it is easy to understand why you
and your advisers might have found our clients’ posts to be disagreeable. Even if the
posts were scornful and acerbic, however, they were protected by the First Amendment.”

They added: “The protection of speech critical of government officials is perhaps the
core concern of the First Amendment, because the freedom of individuals to engage in
this kind of speech is crucial to self-government.”

The letter was copied to the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II; the White
House press secretary, Sean Spicer; and the White House director of social media, Dan
Scavino Jr.
Paraphrase of Charlie Savage’s “​Twitter Users Block Trump Seek Reprieve,
Citing First Amendment”

In 2017, many users were mocking Trump on Twitter. Twitter is a social media
that acts as a place where people can put out their thoughts, and these tweets were
allowed. They were critiqued and asked to take down the rude tweets. They sent a letter
to Trump asking that he unblock them and others that had also mocked or made fun of
Trump for any reason. On Twitter, if you are blocked it is very hard for you to find any
information about or from the user who blocked you. The letter implied that if they did
not unblock the users, that they may be sued. Later, Trump publicly gave the British
Prime Minister a hard time about the attack in Manchester. The issue was that a
information about a suspect had been leaked and the Prime Minister blamed Trump.
Once more people began mocking him and they were blocked.

In this article, there are 2 issues that relate to a similar topic. In the first issue,
The users on Twitter were upset because they were blocked for expressing themselves,
and they believed that this violated their freedom of speech/ expression. Trump believed
that it was okay for him to block them because they were upsetting him. If he was not
allowed to block them, why would that feature be on Twitter. Trump did have the right
to include his critics in engaging in his tweets. The blocking of the users was restricting
their Freedom of speech/expression, violating the First Amendment. The second issue is
a back-up for the users in the first issue. This helps to show that just because a comment
or a tweet is nasty or upsets you, that is no reason to restrict the user’s contact or way of
receiving information.

The article demonstrates the Freedom of Speech because it involves the different
views on Trump blocking people just because they do not agree with him. The problem
is between Trump and the Twitter users who were blocked. If Trump blocking the users
who mock him is violating the user’s Freedom of Speech?