Not unless the government is the entity doing the banning (or collaborating with Twitter to ban accounts at its request).

If the government ran its own Mastodon instance, then there would be an argument to be made that it couldn't ban users on that Mastodon instance, depending on the nature of that Mastodon instance and what it's used for. But that's not what's happening. The government does not run Twitter in any way; they're simply users of the platform, and the government's ability to use features of the platform (such as the "block" feature) may be limited by existing laws, the same way the government's ability to do other things in life is limited by existing laws.

If one of the ways to interact with the executive branch is by calling the white house, wouldn't telecoms banning you from having a phone number be a more similar analogy?

No, because that's not what this ruling does. This ruling says that the White House can't block incoming calls from a specific number.

(Though even that's not really a great analogy, because phone numbers are not considered to correspond uniquely or permanently to an individual the way that social media accounts are).

If the government, for some reason, decided to only communicate via telephone calls, there would still be no duty on any private phone company to provide anyone with the ability to call the government. The government would implicitly require itself to start up and operate a public telephone company, so that any person unwilling or unable to make phone calls via a private company could use it to communicate with the government instead.

In all likelihood, this would mean that VoIP phone booths would appear in every post office, and only calls from those phones to phones registered to government offices would be connected. They wouldn't even necessarily have to use phone numbers or connect to the PSTN; a .gov or .us SIP registration server would do.

For private services, if the government uses them at all, it must use them in a fair and nondiscriminatory manner. The private company has no duty to enforce this on its government users, or to police their behavior.

> Surely that must mean that Twitter banning people is also a violation of the first amendment

Right, and it's nonsensical to apply the first amendment to Twitter, because, broadly speaking, users don't have standing to make First Amendment claims against a private entity like Twitter.

If Twitter is banning people in a problematic way, or in problematic numbers, then there might be an argument that the government can't use Twitter to publish breaking news or announce policy changes. There are, in fact, separate lawsuits around this. But still, that's a far cry from saying "Twitter banning people is a violation of the First Amendment".

But twitter is working with the government in hosting the tweets and thus assumes responsibility to provide a public square, in which case it cannot ban people.

Otherwise government should be banned from using twitter because by picking a private company to put government messages on, the government official (in this case Trump) is picking that company's existing policy (what ever it may be) as a means of banning people, which the government isn't allowed to do.

No. No it doesn't. Allowing the government to use your service does not thereby make it part of the government.

(Nitpick: "free speech" is a general philosophical concept; we're talking about the 1st Amendment, which is a particular application of one of many views on that concept)

Bingo.

I'm assuming you're a developer. Have you ever wanted to leverage a piece of code, say GPL licensed, that does everything you want it to, checks off all of the development boxes, would make your life amazing.... but were forced to go with something else because of compliance? Same thing here. Just because Twitter does everything functionally they need, if it forces them into situations that would run afoul of their requirements, then they're forced to go a different avenue.

> Allowing the government to use your service [as its preferred way of communicating] does not thereby make it part of the government.

a judge doesn't have the capability, however, to force a private entity unrelated to the government to honor those same requirements.

Yes, it does create a situation where the company can impact a person's capability to see the material, but it doesn't run afoul of anything legal. If anything, it gives a reason why public officials should not use in this capacity platforms they don't control.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2018/0...

It focuses on the impact to the blocked user’s ability to interact with those tweets and the ensuing public discussion but does not assume any obligation on Trump to read replies.

You're overlooking the fact that requiring Twitter to retroactively alter its own terms of service once it provided services to the government would be a violation of the takings clause. In your hypothetical example, it's more likely that a court would enjoin the government official from use of the company with the overly restrictive ToS for official business, rather than forcing the firm to alter its policy.

I'm glad I don't live in a world where people refuse to prepare for court cases until the actual injury has happened. Many legal groups have built plans and arguments for potential injuries, either to test if their clients can do some behavior, or to have a proactive case against the government if the government takes some action. For example, many times when the ACLU challenges a law in court, they were planning for it long before the law actually passed. They can't engage in the actual challenge until there are injuries, but they sure can discuss it and plan for it.

In this particular instance, I'm not trying to launch an actual court case, so the court rules of when you have standing for a court case don't apply.

And the ruling only applies to the President's (currently Trump) use of Twitter and says nothing about your interaction with that service.

As a private entity, they're free to make a ToS and you're free to agree or reject it, which governs your usage.

Now, twitter banning someone from all other parts of its service wouldn't be impacted. But banning someone from participating in the public forum should no longer be allowed unless done for a reason that the government would be allowed to use as well.

The judgement governs the President's use of Twitter, not the interaction between Twitter and other people. Twitter does not magically become a Public Forum, just because the President uses it.

Now, I'm not sure that is Right and Just, but I'm also not going to worry about it too much. I don't use it enough to get completely wound up about it.

If twitter isnt a public forum, then trump should be able to block whoever he wants.

Yes, including the ability to deny entry to anyone that Trump doesn't want there. But now a judge has ruled they have a right to be there if Trump was the one asking to ban them, but in doing so has created a loophole where as long as I want to deny them entry because Trump doesn't want them to be there (note that this isn't done on behalf of Trump, but because it is my own desire) they can be banned. It makes the judge's ruling extremely easy to work around, which indicates some fundamental problem with the ruling.

When Trump uses Twitter as his primary method of addressing citizens and announcing administration policies, then selectively prevents citizens from viewing those communications, he's doing something much different (in my mind) than a private company restricting the access of a person to a service whose terms of use they have violated.

The equivalence you drew doesn't seem valid — US citizens have no expectation or right to send communications to the Office of the President and have them read or acted upon. They do have that expectation/right to have equal access to public communications by the President.