This court ruling could set an important precedent for politicians on Twitter

Though it may seem we have been trapped in this digital hellscape for an eternity, Twitter is a mere 13 years old, and it has only served as a major portal of political communication for about a decade. That's not much time by legal standards, which means a lot of what public officials can and cannot do on social media remains ambiguous.

One pertinent question may be settled by a Monday ruling from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that a Virginia public official violated the First Amendment by blocking constituents on a Facebook page explicitly designated for public input. "[W]hy," the opinion asked, "should a municipality be allowed to engage in viewpoint discrimination when holding a virtual public meeting hosted on a private website when such discrimination would be unconstitutional if the meeting was held in a governmental building?"

The ruling could have broad implications, perhaps even for President Trump, whose @realdonaldtrump Twitter handle is ostensibly a private account but is often treated by the White House as a source of official communications. A case concerning whether Trump may block users with that account will be decided by the Second Circuit of Appeals sometime this year, and circuit courts often reference each other's decisions in their rulings.

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