Appeals Court Upholds Ruling Against Trump Twiitter

In May of last year, I commented on a ruling made by a federal court out of the Southern District of New York that decreed that Donald Trump was not allowed to block anyone on Twitter.

While I incorrectly predicted the outcome of the initial case, I have to stick by that inclination. I don't see how this ruling stands.

Wrong again! A federal appeals court has actually upheld the ruling. At this point, unless the case is picked up by the Supreme Court, it will stand as the official legal opinion of the federal courts. Terrible news? If you held out hope that our legal system was a rational system, and above making petty political rulings, then yes, it's bad news. But overall, this is a good ruling for us, as it causes some serious headaches for Twitter and other politicians on the platform.

Following the ruling, two Twitter users who were blocked by AOC filed suit against her in the Eastern District of New York - which happens to also fall under the jurisdiction of the appeals court that upheld the Trump ruling. It would seem that the court would have to follow suit, and rule that her account (even her personal account) is a public forum from which no Americans may be excluded. That, or they will have to come with even more contorted logic to explain how the president's Twitter account is a public place, but a US Representatives' is not. The onus is now on the federal courts to decide whether the ruling applies to all elected officials, or if the decree is merely that special rules apply to Trump only.

This is going to make things interesting for other politicians. Despite all claims, Trump wasn't blocking anyone - even political opponents - from engaging in rational debate. Those blocked were the ones being verbally abusive, obstinate, and inflammatory. They were not having a discussion, they were hurling abuse at the president to gain status points from their ideologues. They were not engaging in the kind of discourse vital to democratic health that the courts pretend they were. They were doing quite the opposite.

So the ruling would seem to state that "all elected officials must be subjected to all forms of degrading abuse on their personal Twitter accounts." That makes Twitter vastly less appealing. It degrades the platform of our enemy, which is great. However, we know what the response will be. Twitter will simply ban anyone berating liberal officials while permitting anything directed at conservatives short of death threats. It's the same selective enforcement that already occurs, except that now there is a legal precedent to be allowed access. All conservatives banned by Twitter will be positioned to enter a class-action lawsuit against Twitter for blocking their access to a federally-protected public space. (I'm tempted to create a Twitter account just to get banned, so that I can jump on.) It should be trivial for any lawyer to show that many conservatives were banned with no evidence given that they violated the terms of the user agreement.

The benefit of all this is that it puts more pressure on the establishment institutions that it does on us. The courts have to engage in a public spectacle of rationalization. Twitter must expend great energy in regulating all this, while at the same time their appeal to public officials is greatly diminished. And liberal officials may now be subjected to the same abuses they encouraged to be lobbied against Trump. All in all, we have a lot of reasons to hope that this ruling stands.