A prominent First Amendment advocacy institute at Columbia University is threatening to sue President Donald Trump unless he stops blocking people on Twitter.
The Knight First Amendment Institute claimed in a letter Tuesday that Trump's Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, is a "designated public forum" that the government cannot ban individuals from for expressing contrary views. A press release from the Institute is asking that Trump unblock certain Twitter users who disagreed with him.
In a letter sent today to President Trump, the Knight First Amendment Institute asked the President to unblock the Twitter accounts of individuals denied access to his account after they criticized or disagreed with him, or face legal action to protect the First Amendment rights of the blocked individuals.
The Knight Institute's executive director Jameel Jaffer argued that Trump blocking Twitter users was unconstitutional.
"This is a context in which the Constitution precludes the President from making up his own rules," Jaffer said.
"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," he continued. "Having opened this forum to all comers, the President can’t exclude people from it merely because he dislikes what they’re saying."
The Knight Institute is representing two verified accounts who were blocked by Trump for the following tweets:
This is pretty much how the whole world sees you.#AMJoy#SundayMorning pic.twitter.com/CycqYnKg8b
— Holly O'Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) May 28, 2017
Why didn't you attend your #PittsburghNotParis rally in DC, Sir? #fakeleader
— Joe Papp (@joepabike) June 3, 2017
This is not the first time Trump's Twitter habits have raised legal challenges. Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) and Democratic Ranking Member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) warned Trump in a March letter that his practice of deleting tweets might violate the Presidential Records Act.