Donald Trump, be warned: It seems that public officials cannot block constituents on social media platforms. A Virginia district court judge ruled on July 27th in the Davison v. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors case that government officials can’t block social media users because of differing viewpoints. Especially if an officeholder uses specific social media pages to interact with his/her constituents, blocking users with opposing perspectives would be “viewpoint discrimination,” a violation of the First Amendment.
Aside from being a very timely and necessary ruling, the decision will most likely have an influence on the pending lawsuit against Trump by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of blocked Twitter users. Trump is infamous for his tweets and has blocked multiple people online for voicing different views and criticism of his statements on the social media platfrom. And although Trump primarily uses his personal account and not his government-official POTUS handle, his tweets were deemed as “official statements” by previous White House press secretary Sean Spicer. In addition to Trump using his Twitter for lawmaking (most recently for the transgender military ban), our president’s violation of the First Amendment by blocking his constituents for expressing disagreement is all the more possible.
Here’s a list of all the accounts Trump blocked on Twitter.