Several Twitter users blocked by President Trump have threatened to file suit, alleging that his Twitter account constitutes a public forum, rendering their exclusion an unconstitutional content-based restriction of speech. They are represented by Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, who, in a letter to the White House Counsel, contends that Trump’s decision to block critics “suppresses speech in a number of ways.” Blocked users cannot search for or easily view the president’s tweets without logging out, and are “limited in their ability to participate in comment threads associated with [Trump’s] tweets.”
The question turns upon our understanding of the purpose and character of Trump’s twitter presence. Is @realDonaldTrump simply the private Twitter account of a man who happens to be president, or does it constitute a designated public forum, as asserted by Jaffer? A designated public forum is a government-controlled space set aside for expressive activities. While the government may establish time, place, and manner constraints on speech within a designated public forum, it may not impose content-based restrictions on expression therein.
Public forums are usually imagined as physical spaces in which citizens may express themselves, but this need not be the case. In Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, the Supreme Court determined that, by establishing a policy of funding student newspapers, the University of Virginia had created a public forum from which it could not exclude qualifying publications simply because they expressed religious, rather than secular, opinions.
However, the fact that designated public forums may be non-physical, coupled with Trump’s status as President of the United States, is probably not a sufficient basis to deem his Twitter account a designated public forum. The courts have generally determined that designated public forums must be owned by the government in an official capacity, or used for official government communication.
It is unlikely that Trump’s Twitter account represents a government-controlled property. Twitter is a private company; while Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad established that a privately owned theater leased by the government may be considered a public forum, even as President, Trump is simply a Twitter user, bound by the same terms of service as everyone else. Twitter allows its users to block accounts they’d like to avoid, and one block-happy user happens to be president. In effect, Trump’s becoming president does not nationalize the private Twitter account that he used before ascending to the nation’s highest office, and will likely continue to use when his tenure in the White House ends. A determination that Trump’s account represents a designated public forum would greatly undermine Twitter’s ability to establish rules for the digital pseudo-commons it maintains.
Finally, it is difficult to understand Trump’s tweets as official government communications of the sort that might push his account into designated public forum territory. While Trump often announces decisions via Twitter, these releases are accompanied or followed by official statements from the White House. Furthermore, Trump does not restrict his twitter presence to the conveyance of official policy, often using it to fire back at detractors or criticize members of his own administration. Can we really regard “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’ ??? Enjoy!” as an official government communication?
In any case, do not expect debate regarding extension of the public forum doctrine to Internet properties to subside any time soon. As human communication increasingly moves online, and voters continue to demand authenticity from their representatives in government, the line between official and private digital communications will remain somewhat blurry. Nevertheless, for libertarians, the current legal paradigm suggests a satisfactory balance between the property rights of social media firms and users, and the First Amendment rights of both government officials and their critics. Ultimately, social media users benefit when firms are allowed to manage their digital commons as they see fit, freely experimenting with new features and means of interaction. The nationalization of politicians’ personal social media accounts would stymie this process, needlessly dividing platforms into venues governed by an evolving understanding of what makes for an enjoyable user experience, and state fora held back by crudely applied terrestrial standards.
