Hence I get a "two-fer" here, in the following diatribe. I can’t get away with that, so I don’t like it when others try it. Number Two on my shit-list are those people who want their cake and be able to eat it too. Now you all know that I’m an asshole-hater of the first stripe, make no mistake. I was thinking that after all these comments, I’d be the first to point this out, but Darkness Of Course has beat me to it. ?We?re pleased that Attorney General Paxton has agreed to unblock our plaintiffs in this lawsuit and are hopeful that he will do the same for anyone else he has blocked from his Twitter account simply because he doesn?t like what they have to say,? said Katie Fallow, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute.Īnyone taking bets on how many of those other people are going to need to sue first?įiled Under: 1st amendment, blocking, ken paxton, texas It seems pretty clear that the lawyers in the case recognize that Paxton isn’t really doing what he is required to do under the 1st Amendment: If he’s just unblocked the people who sued them, that means anyone blocked will have to go through the costly and time consuming process of suing to get unblocked, and that’s not how it’s supposed to work either. The whole point of this is that public officials cannot block anyone from their official accounts like this. I?m still blocked by this is only about mooting this specific lawsuit ? rather than a concession that he shouldn?t be blocking from his official account *any* constituents who publicly criticize him. Law professor Steve Vladeck (who is at the University of Texas Law School) noted that he’s still blocked, even if the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are not: Of course, it looks like he only removed the blocks on those 9 individuals and kept up the blocks on others. However, last week, Paxton unblocked the 9 users who sued him, perhaps realizing he was clearly going to lose this case. Basically, if you remind Paxton of the fact that he’s facing criminal charges, you had a decent shot at getting blocked. As the lawsuit notes, many of the people Paxton blocked found themselves in that situation after they replied to Paxton by reminding him of the still ongoing criminal charges he’s been facing his entire time in office. Last month, controversy prone Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was sued over the same thing (again by the Knight First Amendment Institute). Yet over and over again elected officials seem to ignore this.Īlexandria Ocasio-Cortez was sued over this, as was Marjorie Taylor Greene (both of them eventually settled and agreed to unblock people). Trump case, where the court made it clear that if (1) a public official is (2) using social media (3) for official purposes (4) to create a space of open dialogue (and all four of those factors are met) then they cannot block people from following them based on the views those users express, as it violates the 1st Amendment. This was thoroughly established the Knight v. It seems by now that public officials should know that they cannot block critics on social media if they are using their social media accounts for official business. Tue, May 11th 2021 12:07pm - Mike Masnick
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