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U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled on
May 23 that comments on the president's account, and those of
other government officials, were public forums and that blocking
Twitter Inc users for their views violated their right to free
speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on
Friday sent the Justice Department a list of 41 accounts that
remain blocked from Trump's @RealDonaldTrump account. The seven
users who filed suit had their accounts unblocked in June.
"As the district court has held, the First Amendment prohibits
the president from blocking Twitter users simply because they've
criticized him," said Katie Fallow, senior staff attorney at the
Knight Institute.
The White House did not immediately comment on Friday.
The blocked users include a film producer, screenwriter,
photographer and author. "It appears to us that all or nearly
all of these individuals were blocked from the @RealDonaldTrump
account because they criticized President Trump or his
policies," the group said Friday.
The group said the list was not comprehensive.
Trump has made his Twitter account, with 53.7 million followers,
an integral and controversial part of his presidency, using it
to promote his agenda, announce policy and attack critics. He
has blocked many critics, preventing them from directly
responding to his tweets.
The Justice Department said in an appeal filed on Tuesday that
the ruling was "fundamentally misconceived."
The appeal said Trump's account "belongs to Donald Trump in his
personal capacity and is subject to his personal control, not
the control of the government."
The appeal compared Trump's actions to a presidential address by
John F. Kennedy at his Cape Cod home. "It plainly would not
violate the First Amendment for him to exclude certain members
of the public from his own property because they had previously
criticized him," the Justice Department said.
Buchwald rejected the argument that Trump's First Amendment
rights allowed him to block people with whom he did not wish to
interact.
Trump could "mute" users, meaning he would not see their tweets
while they could still respond to his, she said, without
violating their free speech rights.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Richard Chang)
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