Twitter temporarily suspended Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account.
Allegedly Greene was suspended for twelve hours after spreading apparent “COVID-19 misinformation.”
Taylor Green said on her platform that the COVID-19 virus is only dangerous to old people, and those who are obese
Her account was active and viewable, but was on “read only mode.” She was be unable to post new Tweets until her suspension concluded. The suspension at this time has been concluded for hours and the representative is able to post once more
What’s troubling, is that she was suspended in the first place. Legal precedent shows that the social media accounts of elected officials are public forums.
In 2018 the Knight First Amendment Institute sued them President Donald Trump for blocking users from seeing his Twitter feed. Federal courts ruled that though this happened on Trump’s personal account, since he was an elected official and using the account for messaging, it was a public forum.
Public forums are areas where speech cannot be censored. Following the courts reasoning, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter account would also be a public forum regardless of what she was saying.
This case is currently moot, as the issue was resolved without further action of the court when Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. The legal precedent however does still exist.