## Facts

- President Donald J. Trump used the Twitter account @realDonaldTrump while in office to communicate with the public, including about official matters.
- Twitter’s design allowed the public to view tweets and to participate in an “interactive space” by replying, retweeting, liking, and viewing reply threads.
- Seven individual Twitter users posted critical replies to the President’s tweets and were blocked from @realDonaldTrump.
- Blocking prevented the individual plaintiffs from directly viewing the account’s tweets while logged in, replying in the reply threads, and participating in related interactive features tied to the account.
- The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University alleged injury as a would-be recipient of information and viewpoints expressed by blocked users in the account’s interactive space.
- The district court granted summary judgment for plaintiffs and issued declaratory relief, concluding the interactive space functioned as a public forum and that blocking based on criticism violated the First Amendment.
- The President and a senior aide responsible for social media appealed to the Second Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether operation of @realDonaldTrump, including blocking users, constituted state action attributable to the President in his official capacity.
2. Whether the account’s interactive space constituted a public forum for First Amendment purposes.
3. Whether blocking users because of critical viewpoints was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
4. Whether the Knight Institute had standing based on a First Amendment right to receive information.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit unanimously affirmed the district court’s judgment.
- The court held that managing @realDonaldTrump and blocking users in the challenged manner was state action.
- The court held that the account’s interactive space was a designated or limited public forum.
- The court held that blocking the individual plaintiffs for expressing critical views constituted impermissible viewpoint discrimination.
- The court accepted the Knight Institute’s standing based on impairment of its ability to access speech in the forum.
- The relief affirmed was declaratory, rather than a coercive injunction.

## Legal Principles

- A public official’s social media conduct can be attributable to the state when the official uses the account as an instrument of official communication and exercises control over access to interactive features.
- Government-speech doctrine protects the official’s own posts, but does not convert an associated interactive discussion space into government speech where private users speak.
- A government-controlled space opened for public expressive activity may be treated as a designated or limited public forum, even if it exists on a privately owned platform.
- In a public forum, the government may not exclude speakers based on viewpoint; blocking critics because they disagree with the official’s policies is presumptively unconstitutional.
- The First Amendment protects both speaking and the right to receive information; excluding speakers from a forum can injure would-be listeners who seek access to those viewpoints.

## Conclusion

The Second Circuit concluded that the President’s use of @realDonaldTrump for official purposes made his control of the account’s interactive reply space governmental action, that the space functioned as a public forum, and that blocking users for critical replies was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, warranting declaratory relief.


Knight First Amend. Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. Trump, 928 F.3d 226 (2d Cir. 2019)