Is Trump Violating The Constitution By Blocking People On Twitter?

Some free speech attorneys are making the claim that, by blocking users on Twitter, President Donald Trump is violating protections guaranteed under the 1^st Amendment. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University wrote a letter to the White House calling for the president to stop blocking users. “This is a context in which the Constitution precludes the president from making up his own rules,” said Jameel Jaffer, Knight Institute executive director. “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.” But Michael Overing, a lawyer and adjunct law professor who specializes in 1^st Amendment Law, said courts are unlikely to see a social media platform as a public forum. “Twitter certainly doesn’t want to be a public forum,” Overing told the Los Angeles Times. “If it were, they couldn’t shut down an account in the absence of a true threat… Think about the L.A. Times having no editorial control over their content because it is a public forum.”