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President Donald Trump meets with reporters before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington from the Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, New Jersey on July 7, 2019.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
US President Donald Trump violated the Constitution by blocking people he did not like from his Twitter account, a federal court of appeals was pronounced Tuesday.
In a 3-0 decision, the US Circuit's second appeals court in Manhattan said the first amendment banned Trump from using Twitter's "blocking" feature to limit access to his account, which counts 61 , 8 million subscribers.
"The First Amendment does not allow a public official who uses a social network account for all kinds of official purposes to exclude people from an otherwise open online dialogue because he has expressed points of view with which the agent disagrees, "wrote Circuit Circuit Judge Barrington Parker, citing several Supreme Court decisions.
Neither the White House nor the United States Department of Justice responded immediately to requests for comment. White House social media director Dan Scavino is also a defendant. Twitter has no immediate comment.
Trump has made his @realDonaldTrump account a central and controversial part of his presidency, using it to promote his agenda and attack critics.
His use of the blocking feature was challenged by the Knight First Amendment Institute of Columbia University, as well as by seven Twitter users he had blocked.
"This decision will help ensure the integrity and vitality of the digital spaces that are increasingly important to our democracy," said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight Institute, in a statement.
Tuesday's decision upheld a May 2018 ruling in Manhattan by US District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, which prompted Trump to unblock some accounts.
The Justice Ministry called the decision "fundamentally ill-conceived," saying Trump had used Twitter to express his point of view and not to provide a public forum for discussion.
Parker, however, said that Trump's account carries "all the appearances of a state-run, official account" and is "one of the main vehicles of the White House to conduct official affairs ".
He added that Trump and his associates described the president's tweets as official statements and that even the National Archives viewed these tweets as official records.
Parker also found it ironic that Trump was censoring his speech at a time when the conduct of the US government and its leaders was subject to intense, passionate and open debate.
"This debate, as uncomfortable as it is unpleasant, is nevertheless a good thing," he wrote. "We remind litigants and the public that if the first amendment means anything, it means that the best response to an adverse discourse on matters of public interest is more speech, not less."
The case is the Knight First Amendment Institute of Columbia University et al. Trump et al., 2nd court of appeal of the American circuit, No. 18-1691.
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