Is Trolling Trump a Right or a Privilege?: The Erroneous Finding in Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University v. Trump

Abstract

On May 23, 2018, in Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University v. Trump, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York considered whether the President of the United States violated the First Amendment rights of individuals by blocking them on Twitter. In doing so, the district court agreed with the plaintiffs’ allegations that blocking constituted impermissible viewpoint discrimination in the context of a public forum. Despite the long history of the public forum doctrine, the information age has presented new questions regarding the doctrine, and Knight First Amendment Institute marks the first instance in which a court identified a public forum within a public official’s twitter account. This Comment argues that application of the public forum doctrine to a portion of the President’s Twitter account was inappropriate.