Supreme Court tosses Trump Twitter dispute

The Supreme Court ordered a dispute over former President Donald Trump’s ability to block his critics on Twitter to be tossed out.

The decision brought the battle over Mr. Trump’s Twitter account to a close, as he is no longer in office and has since been banned from the platform.

Mr. Trump’s decision to block seven users from interacting with his Twitter account was unconstitutional, the United States Court of Appeals found, as the space associated with the former president’s account was a designated public forum.

The dispute “highlights the principal legal difficulty that surrounds digital platforms — namely, that applying old doctrines to new digital platforms is rarely straightforward,” Justice Clarence Thomas said, in an opinion concurring with the court’s decision to throw out the case.

“As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms,” Thomas wrote. “The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions. This petition, unfortunately, affords us no opportunity to confront them.”

Mr. Trump created his Twitter account in 2009, and has, over time amassed more than 88 million followers. Over the course of his presidency, Mr. Trump used the forum to air his grievances on an array of issues and announce official policies of his administration and personnel changes.

Twitter permanently banned ex-President Trump from the platform in the wake of the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.