Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca2-18-01691/USCOURTS-ca2-18-01691-3/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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MICHAEL H. PARK, Circuit Judge, joined by RICHARD J. SULLIVAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc:

When public officials use personal social‐media accounts to express their

views, they do not engage in “state action.”  And the First Amendment’s guarantee

of free speech does not include a right to post on other people’s personal social‐

media accounts, even if those other people happen to be public officials.  

We have declined to rehear en banc a decision that extends the First

Amendment to restrict the personal social‐media activity of public officials.  

Because the panel opinion contravenes both our state‐action and public‐forum

precedents, I respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.  

This case concerns the President’s personal Twitter account,

@realDonaldTrump, which he created in 2009, more than six years before taking

office.  The President “blocked” Plaintiffs from interacting with his account, and

they sued, claiming a violation of the First Amendment.  The panel held that (1)

the President engaged in “state action” when he blocked Plaintiffs from

@realDonaldTrump, and (2) the “interactive spaces” of the account—specifically,

the thread of replies to each of the President’s tweets, but not the tweets

themselves—are a public forum.    Therefore, the panel concluded that “the

President violated the First Amendment when he used the blocking function [of

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his personal Twitter account] to exclude” individuals based on their viewpoints.  

Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. Trump, 928 F.3d 226, 239 (2d Cir.

2019).

This decision strays from our precedents, extends the scope of the First

Amendment to encompass the personal social‐media activity of government

officials, and therefore merits review by the whole court.

I.

Although the panel opinion is correct, as the government concedes, that the

President used his personal Twitter account to conduct official business, that does

not end the state‐action analysis.  The panel opinion ignored an important part of

the state‐action test by failing to consider whether the President exercised “some

right or privilege created by the State” when he blocked Plaintiffs from his

personal Twitter account.  Flagg v. Yonkers Sav. & Loan Ass’n, FA, 396 F.3d 178, 186

(2d Cir. 2005) (citation omitted).  “[S]tate action requires both . . . the exercise of

some right or privilege created by the State . . . and” the involvement of “a person

who may fairly be said to be a state actor.”  Id. (emphases in original) (internal

quotation marks omitted) (quoting Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Sullivan, 526 U.S. 40,

50 (1999)).  The “right or privilege” requirement is a well‐established feature of

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state‐action doctrine.    See Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 937 (1982);

United States v. Int’l Bhd. of Teamsters, AFL‐CIO, 941 F.2d 1292, 1296 (2d Cir. 1991).1

The President did not exercise a “right or privilege created by the State”

when he blocked Plaintiffs, and the panel erred in ignoring this requirement.  

Because Twitter is privately owned and controlled, a public official’s use of its

features involves no exercise of state authority.    Twitter, Inc.—not President

Trump or the United States—controls the platform and regulates its use for

everyone.  In “blocking” Plaintiffs, the President used a Twitter feature available

equally to every other user, so his actions were not “fairly attributable to the State.”  

Flagg, 396 F.3d at 186 (citation omitted).  Therefore, the President was not a state

actor when he blocked users from his personal account.  He could block users from

that account before assuming office and can continue to do so after he leaves the

1 Judge Parker’s statement of views with respect to the denial of rehearing en banc (the

“concurrence”) misreads Edmondson Oil when it asserts that the President’s actions were “fairly

attributable to the State” because “[t]he President quintessentially qualifies as a party whose

‘official character . . . lends the weight of the State to his decisions.’”  Concurrence at 4 (citation

omitted).  Edmondson Oil does not support the extraordinary claim that everything the President

does is state action or that the test for state action is different for the President.  This language

simply means that when the actor is a state official, the second prong of the state‐action test is

satisfied, so the only question is whether that official has “exercised some right or privilege

created by the State.”  457 U.S. at 937.  That is the same question here, which the panel opinion

completely overlooks.

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White House.  He “exercised no special powers possessed by virtue of . . . law”

when blocking users, “nor were his actions made possible only because he was

clothed with the authority” of law.  Colombo v. O’Connell, 310 F.3d 115, 118 (2d Cir.

2002) (per curiam) (cleaned up).2  By ignoring this requirement, the panel decision

deviated from this Court’s state‐action precedents.  See Fed. R. App. P. 35(a)(1).  

None of the evidence emphasized by the panel undermines this point.  The

panel pointed to numerous instances when the President tweeted about his work

in office, but that is not enough to make his personal account a “right or privilege

created by the State.”    Such a rule would preclude government officials from

discussing public matters on their personal accounts without converting all

activity on those accounts into state action.3   

2 The panel’s reliance on Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546 (1975), is

misplaced.  There, it was undisputed that the government used facilities that were “under their

control.”  Id. at 555.  So the Court had no reason to consider whether state action was at issue.

3 For example, when incumbent officials run for reelection, we ordinarily understand

them to be expressing a mix of personal and official views.  But the panel’s reasoning would seem

to foreclose incumbents from selecting who can participate in campaign rallies, online groups, or

personal events.    Similarly, when officials make public statements about their faith or offer

prayers, we do not understand them to be violating the Establishment Clause.  See Van Orden v.

Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 723 (2005) (Stevens, J. dissenting) (“Our leaders, when delivering public

addresses, often express their blessings simultaneously in the service of God and their

constituents.  Thus, when public officials deliver public speeches, we recognize that their words

are not exclusively a transmission from the government because those oratories have embedded

within them the inherently personal views of the speaker as an individual member of the polity.”

(emphasis in original)).  So too here.  The mere fact that Donald Trump uses Twitter for both

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In addition, the panel’s reasoning—that because the President tweets in an

official capacity, his use of Twitter’s blocking function is state action—operates at

the wrong level of analysis.  The panel focuses on the status of the entire account—

i.e., whether the President’s use of Twitter transformed his personal account into

an official account—rather than examining the specific action at issue—i.e.,

whether blocking Plaintiffs from accessing the interactive features of his personal

Twitter account amounts to state action.   But this Court has explained that we

should “look to the nature of the officer’s act, not simply his duty status.”  Pitchell

v. Callan, 13 F.3d 545, 548 (2d Cir. 1994).  By departing from the law of state action,

the panel decision blurred the line between actions by public officials in the

performance of their official duties and actions “in the ambit of their personal

pursuits.”  Id. at 548 (quoting Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 111 (1945)).  And

by fixating on the President’s recent tweets, the panel opinion and the concurrence

fall into a logical fallacy—i.e., that some official use of a Twitter account turns all

use, or even all tweets, into state action.  Our precedent calls for a more nuanced

analysis that focuses on the specific feature at issue, which is the President’s ability

to block users.  

personal and official communication does not transform all of his Twitter activities into state

action.

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Finally, the panel’s reliance on evidence from the factual record unmoored

from state‐action doctrine introduces confusion about when a public official’s

personal social‐media activity becomes state action.  For example, it is not clear

from the panel’s decision when President Trump’s Twitter activity crossed into

state action.    Did it happen on Inauguration Day?   Upon a particular “official

announcement” from @realDonaldTrump?  And how many “official” tweets does

it take to convert “personal” tweets into state action?  The panel decision raises

difficult questions but provides little guidance for officials today or to litigants,

lawyers, and judges tomorrow.

II.

Even assuming state action, the panel’s application of First Amendment

public‐forum doctrine to @realDonaldTrump is a poor fit, as is the characterization

of the account’s “interactive spaces” as a public forum.    The panel opinion’s

public‐forum analysis strayed from precedent in two ways.    First, it is well

established that when the government engages in its own speech, it is permitted

to “speak for itself” and to “select the views that it wants to express.”  Pleasant

Grove City, Utah v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460, 467–68 (2009) (citations omitted).  Thus,

where government speech is at issue, forum analysis does not apply.  Id.  To avoid

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this result, the panel disaggregated the President’s Twitter feed into his initial

tweets, which it recognized as government speech, and “his supervision of the

interactive features of the Account,” which it excluded from that speech.  Knight,

928 F.3d at 239.  With this move, the panel concluded that the “interactive spaces”

are a public forum.  Id. at 234.  But the panel cannot have it both ways, and the

Supreme Court has warned against extending the public‐forum framework in just

this sort of “mechanical way.”  Ark. Educ. Television Comm’n v. Forbes, 523 U.S. 666,

672–73 (1998).  

Second, the panel opinion erred in finding that the President created a

public forum by continuing to use Twitter’s features the same way he did before

taking office, even though “[t]he government ‘does not create a public forum by

inaction or by permitting limited discourse.’”  Perry v. McDonald, 280 F.3d 159, 167

(2d Cir. 2001) (emphases removed) (quoting Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. & Educ.

Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 802 (1985)).

A.

The Supreme Court has warned that we should be “wary of the notion that

a partial analogy in one context,” i.e. public‐forum doctrine, “can compel a full

range of decisions in such a new and changing area.”  Denver Area Educ. Telecomms.

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Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518 U.S. 727, 749 (1996) (plurality opinion) (Breyer, J.).  

“Having first arisen in the context of streets and parks, the public forum doctrine

should not be extended in a mechanical way” to new areas if it is not “compatible

with [their] intended purpose.”  Forbes, 523 U.S. at 672–73 (citation omitted).  For

example, the Supreme Court has noted the limited applicability of the public‐

forum framework to public television because “public broadcasting as a general

matter does not lend itself to scrutiny under the forum doctrine.”  Id. at 675.  

The panel here engaged in just the sort of mechanical extension of the

public‐forum framework that the Supreme Court has warned against.    To

shoehorn Twitter into public‐forum doctrine, the panel carved out “interactive

spaces” from the tweets to which they are connected.  It acknowledged that the

tweets are government speech, but then applied public‐forum doctrine to the

“interactive spaces.”    This disaggregation of Twitter’s features was wholly

artificial—Twitter’s own rules make no such distinction between “initial tweets”

and “interactive spaces.”4  The panel then stretched the concept of a public forum,

4 The concurrence points to future updates to Twitter’s platform that it believes will

“highlight the distinction that the panel correctly made” between tweets and “interactive spaces.”  

Concurrence at 13.  But the possibility that relevant features may change even before this litigation

has concluded should not comfort us, but make us wary of imposing rigid and potentially

constricting legal frameworks on fast‐evolving technologies.  

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which was originally meant to ensure that “members of the public retain strong

free speech rights when they venture into public streets and parks,” to hold that

the President may not use his personal account on a private company’s website in

a certain way.  Pleasant Grove City, 555 U.S. at 469.  The panel engaged in this forced

analysis because the personal social‐media pages of government officials do “not

lend [themselves] to scrutiny under the forum doctrine” the way a sidewalk or

park might.  Forbes, 523 U.S. at 675.

A few examples illustrate the illogic of applying public‐forum doctrine in

connection with government speech.  If an official gives remarks and allows for

participation by supporters of the government’s policies, that would not require

opening the floor to opponents.  Or if an official distributes pamphlets and solicits

letters from the public, that would not deprive the official of editorial discretion to

select which responses to publish.  Likewise, if tweeting an official message on a

personal Twitter account were government speech, then it should not deprive a

public official from blocking certain users.   See, e.g., Walker v. Tex. Div., Sons of

Confederate Veterans, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2239, 2251 (2015) (“The fact that private parties

take part in the design and propagation of a message does not extinguish the

governmental nature of the message or transform the government’s role into that

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of a mere forum‐provider.”); see also Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S.

Ct. 1921, 1937 (2019) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (noting that in the context of

“government speech,” “picking favored viewpoints is appropriately

commonplace”).  

It would be illogical and impractical to apply forum doctrine to such

scenarios by bifurcating government speech and “interactive spaces” to require

the airing of competing views.    That is because the purpose of such speech,

including the “interactive spaces” that may accompany it, is to convey the

government’s views, not to create a public forum.  

B.

Second, the panel opinion erred in concluding that the President

“intentionally” turned his Twitter account into a public forum.  Knight, 928 F.3d at

237.  It is well established that the government can create a public forum “only by

intentionally opening a nontraditional forum for public discourse.”  Cornelius, 473

U.S. at 802 (emphasis added).  We have explained that “[t]he government ‘does

not create a public forum by inaction or by permitting limited discourse.’”  Perry,

280 F.3d at 167 (emphases omitted) (quoting Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 802).

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None of the factors considered by the panel indicates that the President

intentionally opened his Twitter account to public discourse.  The panel based its

conclusion on factors such as the general public’s access to the “interactive

spaces,” the ability of Twitter users to reply and retweet, the holding out of the

account as a means the President employs to communicate, and the expressive

activity in the interactive spaces.  Knight, 928 F.3d at 235–36.  But none of these

factors speaks to the President’s intention, and the record is clear that Donald

Trump set up @realDonaldTrump in 2009 to convey his own views, not to open a

forum for public discourse.  Nor are the “interactive spaces” of Twitter intended

to provide open access for all.  For one thing, only those with a Twitter account

can retweet, reply, or like a tweet.    Moreover, Twitter provides features like

“blocking” precisely to enable users to limit access to and to curate activity on their

accounts.    Indeed, Twitter describes itself as “a place to share ideas and

information, connect with your communities, and see the world around you,” and

it explains that “[i]n order to protect the very best parts of that experience, we

provide tools designed to help you control what you see and what others can see

about you, so that you can express yourself on Twitter with confidence.”5   

5 How to Control your Twitter Experience, Twitter, https://help.twitter.com/en/safety‐and‐

security/control‐your‐twitter‐experience (last visited Mar. 13, 2020).

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Under the panel’s reasoning, if a public official speaks on a platform that

automatically permits others to comment, then the official is responsible for

creating a public forum.  This is inconsistent with our holding that the government

cannot create a public forum by “inaction” alone, and it illustrates how a strict

application of public‐forum doctrine is ill‐suited for social media.  See Perry, 280

F.3d at 167 (citation omitted).

III.

Courts should be circumspect in extending legal doctrines to new and

evolving technologies outside the realm of judicial expertise.  This is particularly

true when the result may have significant implications for interactions between

government officials and the public.  

The panel opinion will reach far beyond the Oval Office, creating

uncertainty about the use of social media by public officials at every level of

government.  Public officials today routinely maintain social‐media accounts for

official, personal, and campaign use, and they address issues of public concern on

all of them.  To be sure, the President’s use of Twitter is unprecedented in some

respects.  But it is now commonplace for politicians to use personal accounts to

promote their official activities.  The key facts in this case—that the President had

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a personal Twitter account, that he used it to tweet on matters relating to his office,

and that the public was able to comment on his tweets—are not unique.  Indeed,

this case is just one of several similar lawsuits challenging the right of public

officials to use personal social‐media accounts in a private capacity.    See, e.g.,

Hikind v. Ocasio‐Cortez, No. 1:19‐cv‐03956 (E.D.N.Y. filed July 9, 2019) (suit against

congresswoman for blocking user on personal Twitter account, since dismissed

with the consent of the parties); Campbell v. Reisch, No. 2:18‐CV‐4129‐BCW, 2019

WL 3856591 (W.D. Mo. Aug. 16, 2019) (suit against state legislator for blocking

user on Twitter campaign page), appeal filed No. 19‐2994 (8th Cir. Sept. 16, 2019);

Leuthy v. LePage, No. 1:17‐cv‐00296‐JAW, 2018 WL 4134628 (D. Me. Aug. 29, 2018)

(suit against governor for blocking user on Facebook); Garnier v. Poway Unified Sch.

Dist., No. 17‐cv‐2215‐W (JLB), 2019 WL 4736208 (S.D. Cal. Sept. 26, 2019) (suit

against school officials for blocking residents on Facebook and Twitter).

Our decision in this case will affect how public officials may use social

media, making them less able to defend themselves from hate and harassment.  It

will limit how public officials may act in a personal capacity in all aspects of their

life, online or otherwise, by writing the “right or privilege” requirement out of

state‐action doctrine.  And it will bind us to apply public‐forum doctrine when

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analyzing social‐media activity, even though the framework is a poor fit for how

social media actually functions.  These are issues of “exceptional importance” and

merit review by the whole court.  Fed. R. App. P. 35(a)(2).

The panel decision concludes with the statement that “the best response to

disfavored speech on matters of public concern is more speech, not less.”  Knight,

928 F.3d at 240.  Despite the concurrence’s premature reassurances to the contrary,

it seems likely to me that this decision will have the unintended consequence of

creating less speech if the social‐media pages of public officials are overrun with

harassment, trolling, and hate speech, which officials will be powerless to filter.  

The panel’s effort to extend public‐forum doctrine to social media is a mismatch

and highlights why courts “should be cautious in applying our free speech

precedents to the internet” and thus “should proceed circumspectly, taking one

step at a time.”  Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1744 (2017) (Alito, J.,

concurring in the judgment).

For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.  

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