Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University et al v. Trump et al

Filing 71

LETTER addressed to Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald from Jameel Jaffer dated April 4, 2018 re: the Court's March 13, 2018 letter and Defendants' March 28, 2018 response. Document filed by Rebecca Buckwalter, Philip Cohen, Holly Figueroa, Eugene Gu, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Brandon Neely, Joseph Papp, Nicholas Pappas.(Jaffer, Jameel)

April 4, 2018
Via ECF and by Fax
The Honorable Naomi Reice Buchwald
United States District Court for the
Southern District of New York
500 Pearl Street, Room 2270
New York, NY 10007-1312
Re:

Knight First Amendment Institute, et al. v. Trump,
et al., Case No. 17-CV-5205 (NRB)

Dear Judge Buchwald,
Plaintiffs write in response to the Court’s order of March 13, 2018
and in reply to the government’s letter of March 28, 2018. The government
contends that the First Amendment would not prohibit the government from
blocking individuals from @POTUS and @WhiteHouse on the basis of
viewpoint. It further argues that even if viewpoint-based blocking from
those accounts would infringe the First Amendment, viewpoint-based
blocking from @realDonaldTrump does not. The government’s arguments
are unconvincing.
First, the government errs in contending that the public forum
doctrine is inapplicable to @POTUS, @WhiteHouse, and
@realDonaldTrump. The government argues that comments posted by
private citizens on these accounts do not occur “on” or “through” a
government-controlled space, but this is wrong. As the record in this case
shows, replies to the President’s tweets appear in comment threads below
the President’s tweets. Stip. ¶¶ 22-23. By blocking an individual from his
account, the President prevents that individual’s replies from appearing in
the comment threads. Id. ¶¶ 28, 54. In other words, when the President
blocks an individual from his account, he blocks that individual from a
government-controlled space that has been opened up to the public at large
for expression. This is why @realDonaldTrump is properly considered a
public forum, and why @POTUS and @Whitehouse should be considered
public forums, too.
The government is also wrong to argue that the President’s blocking
of an individual does not “generally” have the effect of excluding that

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individual from the forum. Again, those who are blocked from
@realDonaldTrump cannot reply directly to the President’s tweets, which
means that their direct replies will not appear in the comment threads below
the President’s tweets—or anywhere else on Twitter.1 The government
points out that blocked users are not prevented from posting tweets about
the President’s tweets—so long as they are willing to take additional steps
to access the President’s tweets, id. ¶¶ 55, 58, 60. The important point,
however, is that blocked users are prevented from speaking in the relevant
forum—that is, in the comment threads associated with
@realDonaldTrump. Id. ¶¶ 54, 58, 60. Likewise, it is a distraction to focus,
as the government does, on the fact that blocked users can—with effort, id.
¶¶57-58—reply to other individuals’ replies to the President, because the
important fact is that they are prevented from replying directly to the
President. The government cannot dispute that blocking a user prevents that
user from participating fully and on equal terms with users who have not
been blocked.
Second, the government errs in arguing that even if viewpoint-based
blocking on @POTUS and @WhiteHouse violated the First Amendment,
such blocking on @realDonaldTrump would not. In support of this
argument, the government primarily reiterates its assertion that
@realDonaldTrump is a “personal” account not subject to the First
Amendment. As the record shows, however, President Trump uses the
@realDonaldTrump account as an official instrument of his presidency,2
and indeed the government has used the account interchangeably with
@POTUS and @WhiteHouse.
Finally, the government incorrectly suggests that applying the
public forum doctrine to the @realDonaldTrump account would infringe on
the President’s associational rights. Public officials who preside over
designated public forums do not have an “associational right” not to interact
with people in that forum. The government does not cite any authority in
support of its argument, nor could it. Nor does the mere fact that a forum
1

The government’s assertion that if one of the President’s tweets were deleted,
“the responses to the deleted tweet would be unaffected,” Gov’t Ltr. at 2, is
nonsensical because an individual who has been blocked cannot reply to the
original tweet in the first place.

2

In addition to the evidence of official use in the Stipulation, in the past few weeks
alone the President has used the account to dismiss and replace two cabinet
members. See Peter Baker, et al., Trump Fires Rex Tillerson and Will Replace Him
with
CIA
Chief
Pompeo,
N.Y.
Times
(Mar.
13,
2018),
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/us/politics/trump-tillerson-pompeo.html;
Donovan Slack, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin Is Out, Trump
Announces
by
Tweet,
USA
Today
(Mar.
28,
2018),
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/28/david-shulkinveterans-affairs-secretary-forced-out-john-kelly/346741002/.

2

includes speech by government officials mean that the forum as a whole is
“government speech.” Gov’t Ltr. at 4.3 The record shows that the
@realDonaldTrump account is a designated public forum open to speech
by the general public, and that the President acts as a gatekeeper to that
forum. His viewpoint-based blocking in that forum violates the First
Amendment.
Respectfully,
/s/ Jameel Jaffer
Jessica Ring Amunson (pro hac Jameel Jaffer (JJ-4653)
vice)
Katherine Fallow (KF-2535)
Carrie DeCell (CD-0731)
Tassity S. Johnson (pro hac vice)
Jenner & Block LLP
Alex Abdo (AA-0527)
1099 New York Avenue, NW,
Knight First Amendment Institute at
Suite 900
Columbia University
Washington, DC 20001
314 Low Library
535 West 116th Street
New York, NY 10027
[phone]
[e-mail]
Counsel for Plaintiffs

3

Notably, none of the cases cited by the government for its novel argument that
public officials’ “right not to associate” trumps the rights of citizens to speak in a
public forum in fact involved claims of a public forum. See X-Men Sec., Inc. v.
Pataki, 196 F.3d 56, 70 (2d Cir. 1999); Miller v. Town of Hull, Mass., 878 F.2d
523, 532 (1st Cir. 1989); Cal. Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567, 574
(2000); Bond v. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116, 136 (1966); The Baltimore Sun Co. v.
Ehrlich, 437 F.3d 410, 418 (4th Cir. 2006).

3