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Did Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just violate the First Amendment?

Aaron Walker  |  8:12 AM on May 31, 2023

So recently the Alexandria Occasional-Cortex Ocasio-Cortez parody press account that is repeatedly marked as parody was let out of so-called ‘permanent suspension’ (seriously, never believe Twitter when they say a suspension is permanent). That brought a lot of attention to the account, as did when this exchange happened:

So, this prompted this reaction from Ms. Ocasio-Cortez (the real one, not the intentionally funny one):

And there was lots of mockery, as we reported here and here. Next thing we know, we see this:

If that’s genuine, then Ms. Ocasio-Cortez seems to have knowingly violated the First Amendment.

But, let’s use some caution, here. After all, this is a tweet from a parody account. By the very nature of the beast, you can’t 100% trust what it is saying—it might be their idea of a joke.

But let’s pretend it is true (our “gut” says it is, fwiw). New York is covered by the Second Circuit and the Second Circuit told President Trump in no uncertain terms that blocking people on Twitter violated the First Amendment in Knight First Amendment Inst. Columbia v. Trump, 928 F. 3d 226 (2d Cir. 2019). The Knight court (heh) described those plaintiffs’ winning complaint as follows:

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In May and June of 2017, the President blocked each of the Individual Plaintiffs (but not the Knight First Amendment Institute) from the Account. The government concedes that each of them was blocked after posting replies in which they criticized the President or his policies and that they were blocked as a result of their criticism. The government also concedes that because they were blocked they are unable to view the President’s tweets, to directly reply to these tweets, or to use the @realDonaldTrump webpage to view the comment threads associated with the President’s tweets.

The Individual Plaintiffs further contend that their inability to view, retweet, and reply to the President’s tweets limits their ability to participate with other members of the public in the comment threads that appear below the President’s tweets. The parties agree that, without the context of the President’s original tweets (which the Individual Plaintiffs are unable to view when logged in to their accounts), it is more difficult to follow the conversations occurring in the comment threads. In addition, the parties have stipulated that as a consequence of their having been blocked, the Individual Plaintiffs are burdened in their ability to view or directly reply to the President’s tweets, and to participate in the comment threads associated with the President’s tweets.

This burden, the Second Circuit found, violated the First Amendment.

Now, we think that decision is ridiculous. The President is not obligated to communicate with everyone every time he or she communicates, or to create a forum in which they can communicate with each other. For instance, if the President sends out a letter, he is not obligated to mail every American, or list the addresses of every American in the letter to facilitate discussion of the contents of that letter. And if the President sends an email, the same is true: He (or she) is not obligated to email every citizen, and to do so in a way that lets every American communicate with every other American by hitting ‘reply all.’

On the other hand, there is the concept of ‘their rules,’ the idea that even if we object to a certain rule, it should be applied to the left, good and hard. We are waiting for politicians to be told that they use can’t social media that engages in viewpoint discrimination (which violates the First Amendment).

But let’s keep the focus on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. She’s already gotten a dose of ‘their rules’ when she blocked New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind on Twitter (whose name sounds suspiciously like ‘Dovahkiin’ to this fan of Skyrim). Mr. Hikind sued her, which resulted in this:

That’s right she admitted to violating the Dragonborn’s Mr. Hikind’s First Amendment rights. From the article:

‘Mr. Hikind has a First Amendment right to express his views and should not be blocked for them,’ she said in a statement. ‘In retrospect, it was wrong and improper and does not reflect the values I cherish. I sincerely apologize for blocking Mr. Hikind.’

So, if Ms. Ocasio-Cortez really blocked the parody account—and that’s a big ‘if’ given our source of information is a parody account—then it would seem she has stopped cherishing those values.

The only defense is to say that this is a personal account and she doesn’t do official business on it … which seems kind of dubious when she tweets out stuff like this:

In any case, there was much mockery:

That prompted this response:

*laughing*

Eh, we don’t think a person making fun of you is that much of a compliment, but you do you.

Fun and, we suspect, short.

Will they rename the Streisand Effect the ‘Ocasio-Cortez Effect?’

Of course, the congresscritter had some support:

The term ‘bully’ is one of the most misused terms in modern English.

Look, everyone, she is not going to date you.

Finally, one person made an observation:

We think he had a typo. He wrote ‘interesting’ when the correct word is ‘hilarious.’

***

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