April 7, 2021:-On Monday, the Supreme Court erased a federal appeals court decision that Donald Trump violated the Constitution by blocking his Twitter critics.

The justices moved the decision from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and sent it to the lower court to dismiss the case as no longer active because Trump is a private citizen. The action means the lower court’s decision will no longer bind future judges.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit unanimously held in 2019 that Trump acted in his official capacity when he used blocked from his Twitter. The court said that Trump had excluded the individuals effectively from a public forum, in violation of the First Amendment.

Justice Clarence Thomas said in a concurrence that he also wills to vacate the 2nd Circuit opinion, which noted that Trump no longer held office.

“Respondents have a point, for example, that some aspects of Mr. Trump’s account resemble a constitutionally protected public forum, But it seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it,” Thomas wrote.

The suit was brought by individuals who were blocked by Trump on Twitter and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

It was known as Trump v. Knight First Amendment Institute, No. 20-197, until the administrations’ change.

The Knight First Amendment Institute allowed that the case was no longer active. The legal group said that the case was made moot after Twitter removed Trump from its platform in January after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In a statement, Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director, said the case “was about a straightforward principle that is foundational to our democracy: Public officials can’t ban people from public forums simply because they disagree with them.”

“While we would have liked the Supreme Court to leave the Second Circuit’s ruling on the books, we’re gratified that other courts have already adopted the appeals court’s reasoning, and we’re confident it will continue to shape the way that public officials use social media,” Jaffer said.