Patrick Semansky
/ AP
Originally published on April 5, 2021 12:45 pm
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a lower court ruling that former President Donald Trump violated the First Amendment rights of critics he blocked on Twitter, now that Trump is a private citizen.
Lawyers for those Trump blocked on Twitter argued that the former president's Twitter account functioned as an official source of information about the government, leading a federal appeals court to rule that Trump's blocking amounted to illegally silencing their viewpoints.
But Trump is no longer in office, and Twitter has permanently banned him from its platform over glorifying violence. So the lower court's ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should be tossed, the Supreme Court ruled, instructing the court to dismiss the case as "moot," or no longer active.