Trump appeals Twitter ruling, unblocks plaintiffs

The Justice Department, as expected, will appeal a federal district court ruling about President Donald Trump’s Twitter habits.

Reuters reported on Monday night that department officials filed their intent to appeal on the President’s behalf in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump.

Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute attorney in the case, told Reuters that the seven plaintiffs who complained about being blocked from Trump’s Twitter feed, were recently unblocked by the White House. Reuters also received conformation administration officials the accounts were unblocked.

Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald’s decision on May 23 in the United States District Court Southern District of New York included a “declaratory judgment that “the blocking of the individual plaintiffs from the @realDonaldTrump account because of their expressed political views violates the First Amendment.”

That had led some observers to believe Trump and Social Media Director Dan Scavino could continue to “unblock” the seven banned followers as part of the appeals process. Instead, the case will proceed to address the core issues in Buchwald’s ruling.

Among those issues will be the court’s ability to consider the case and a broader First Amendment argument.

Last year, the Justice Department argued that a ruling for Knight and the plaintiffs would raise clear constitutional questions. “It would send the First Amendment deep into uncharted waters to hold that a President’s choices about whom to follow, and whom to block, on Twitter—a privately run website that, as a central feature of its social-media platform, enables all users to block particular individuals from viewing posts—violate the Constitution,” said attorney Michael Baer.