Last month, a federal court judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s habit of blocking people on Twitter was unconstitutional. The ruling—part of a lawsuit filed by civil liberties group Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University against the president and his social media manager Daniel Scavino last year—determined that the @realDonaldTrump account is a “public forum,” and therefore his blocking people based on their political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment.
Tuesday, the Knight Institute announced that the seven individuals it represented in court were unblocked by the @realDonaldTrump account.
Videos by VICE
Others, however, remain blocked. Noisey editor Dan Ozzi, who’s also been blocked by Trump but was not part of the lawsuit, told me on the public forum of Twitter that he’s still blocked, and simply cannot believe that this POTUS would ignore a matter of First Amendment rights:
“We are concerned by reports that individuals other than our clients are still blocked from the account,” Katie Fallow, senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute, said in a press release. “It should go without saying that those individuals have the same rights as our clients. If they have been blocked on the basis of their viewpoints, the White House should unblock them immediately.”
