"The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of Twitter users and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.The lawsuit contended that because Trump uses Twitter for a variety of policy announcements, his account is "a designated public forum" that cannot exclude people due to their political views.The judge acknowledged that even though the president has certain free speech rights, he cannot violate the rights of other Twitter users. "Jaffer added in a statement, "The president's practice of blocking critics on Twitter is pernicious and unconstitutional, and we hope this ruling will bring it to an end. "There was no immediate reaction from the White House.In the lawsuit, the seven individual plaintiffs, which included a University of Maryland professor, a Texas police officer and a New York comic, said they were blocked from the @realDonaldTrump account after posting tweets critical of his policies.Although they were still able to see the tweets without logging in to Twitter, and to quote Trump's tweets in their own messages, their comments were excluded from the threads that make up a public "conversation. "The case could affect other social media interactions involving public officials.The Knight Institute said it was lodging an appeal in the case of a Virginia resident blocked on Facebook by a local public official.A supporting brief in the New York case argued that the case is important in guaranteeing political speech. "In light of social media's importance to modern life, President Trump's practice of blocking individual users robs them of a singularly valuable opportunity to make their speech heard," said the brief filed by the Georgetown University Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

Source: Egypt Today May 23, 2018 19:30 UTC