2nd Circuit Refuses Rehearing of Decision Barring Trump From Blocking Twitter Users
One of the court's active judges had requested a poll on whether to rehear the case, but a vote fell short of the majority needed to put the matter before the full appeals court.
March 23, 2020 at 12:12 PM
4 minute read
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Monday refused to rehear a 2019 ruling that barred President Donald Trump from blocking certain critics from following him on Twitter.
The Manhattan-based appeals court issued its ruling over the objection of two judges, who said they supported sending the case to the court's full complement of 13 commissioned judges.
The decision to deny en banc rehearing left in place a July 9 ruling from a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit, which held Trump's use of Twitter through his @realDonaldTrump account had created a public forum that could not "selectively exclude" those with opposing viewpoints.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which represented Trump in the suit, said officials were reviewing the ruling.
An attorney for the plaintiffs, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, did not respond Monday to a request for comment.
According to Monday's decision, one of the court's active judges had requested a poll on whether to rehear the case, but a vote fell short of the majority needed to rehear the case before the entire appeals court.
U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Park said in a 14-page dissent that Trump had not engaged in any official "state action" by posting personal views to his account, which was created in 2009, more than six years before he took office. And the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, he said, did not include a right for plaintiffs to interact with other people's social media accounts, "even if those other people happen to be public officials."
"By departing from the law of state action, the panel decision blurred the line between actions by public officials in the performance of their official duties and actions 'in the ambit of their personal pursuits,'" Park wrote.
"And by fixating on the President's recent tweets, the panel opinion and the concurrence fall into a logical fallacy—i.e., that some official use of a Twitter account turns all use, or even all tweets, into state action," he said in the dissent, joined by Judge Richard Sullivan.
Park and Sullivan were each appointed to the Second Circuit by Trump.
Judge Barrington Parker, who authored the panel's July decision, defended the ruling on Monday as a "straightforward application of state action and public forum doctrines," and pointed to recent examples of tweets that announced official administration positions, including certain military responses Trump said he would take against Iran in January.
"These tweets are published by a public official clothed with the authority of the state using social media as a tool of governance and as an official channel of communication on an interactive public platform," Parker said. "The panel decision discussed the President's use of the Account in an official capacity in detail."
Parker was nominated to the Second Circuit by President George W. Bush.
Judges Debra Ann Livingston and Susan L. Carney took no part in deciding the rehearing petition, the court said.
The plaintiffs were represented by the Knight Foundation's Jameel Jaffer, Katherine Fallow, Caroline DeCell, Alexander Abdo and Meenakshi Krishnan, as well as Jessica Ring Amunson, Tassity Johnson and Tali R. Leinwand of Jenner & Block,
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