April 7, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Government intervention to rein in social media giants’ anti-conservative bias would be well within the historical and legal precedent applied to “common carriers” of communication and transportation services in the United States, US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote Monday in a concurring opinion laying out the most detailed legal framework yet for conservatives seeking a solution to Big Tech.
Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute concerns Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute suing the Trump administration over former President Donald Trump’s use of Twitter’s Block feature on his personal Twitter account. (President Joe Biden was not involved in the suit; the name on the case automatically changed from Trump to Biden due to the change in administrations.)
In 2019, a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled that Trump could not do so on the theory that Trump was acting in his official capacity when using the account, and as such his blocking of unwanted readers (an action that any reader can easily circumvent by logging out of the blocked Twitter account) violated their First Amendment right to speak in a public forum.
On Monday, the Supreme Court vacated that ruling and directed
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