how the First Amendment impacts private social media accounts used by public
officials. Knight, 928 F.3d at 236. We held only that the First Amendment does not
permit a government official who utilizes a social media platform for official purposes
to exclude persons from an otherwise open dialogue merely because they expressed
views disfavored by the official.
II.
In Packingham v. North Carolina Justice Kennedy discussed the relationship
between Twitter and the First Amendment. He said that “[w]hile in the past there may
have been difficulty in identifying the most important places (in a spatial sense) for the
exchange of views, today the answer is clear. It is cyberspace—the vast democratic
forums of the Internet in general, and social media in particular. . . . [O]n Twitter, users
can petition their elected representatives and otherwise engage with them in a direct
manner. . . . In short, social media users employ these websites to engage in a wide
array of protected First Amendment activity on topics as diverse as human thought.”
137 S. Ct. 1730, 1735‐36 (2017). If Justice Kennedy is right, as I believe he is, then the
dissent is wrong.
Keeping the Supreme Court’s words in mind, the panel concluded that the
“interactive space” of the Account was a public forum for the purposes of the First
Amendment. Knight, 928 F.3d at 237. The dissent articulates two concerns with our
public forum analysis. Its first objection is to the “disaggregation” of the President’s
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