#TopNew : Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit over Trumps Twitter account

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit over former President Donald Trump's Twitter account after the Justice Department said the end of Trump's presidency turned the case into a dead letter.

The case came after seven people critically responded to tweets on the president's now-banned @realDonaldTrump account and he retaliated by blocking them. They sued and won in lower courts, which held that blocking individual respondents based on their views violated the First Amendment.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said the president's account amounted to a kind of public forum and often referred to official business with contributions from members of the White House staff.

The Trump Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to overturn those rulings. While the president's tweets were sometimes official statements, his decision to block individual responses was personal allowed by any Twitter user, government attorneys maintained.

But the night before President Joe Biden was sworn in, the Justice Department asked the court to dismiss the case as moot and also to vacate the lower court's rulings.

Katie Fallow of the Knight Institute, a group that advocates on behalf of First Amendment issues and represented Twitter users Trump blocked, urged judges to leave lower court rulings intact. "There is now widespread recognition that the principles we established in this case are important in protecting the vitality of the public forums that are increasingly important to our democracy," shaping the way public officials use social media. .

Judge Clarence Thomas said he agreed that the case should be dismissed as moot. But he said it highlighted a problem, namely that "applying old doctrines to new digital platforms is rarely straightforward."

It seems strange, Thomas said, "to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unlimited authority to remove it."

In January, Twitter permanently suspended Trump's account, citing "the risk of further incitement to violence" after a crowd of his supporters attacked the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from formally acknowledging Biden's election victory. Five people died. MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law Monday allowing him to stay in power until 2036, a measure that formalizes constitutional changes approved in a vote last year.

The July 1 constitutional vote included a provision that restored Putin's previous term limits, allowing him to run for president two more times. The change was approved by the Kremlin-controlled legislature and the relevant law signed by Putin was published Monday on an official legal information portal.

The 68-year-old Russian president, who has been in power for more than two decades, longer than any other Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, said he would decide later whether to run again in 2024 when his current six-year term years. ends.

He has argued that it was necessary to reset the term count to keep his lieutenants focused on his work rather than "looking for possible successors."

The constitutional amendments also emphasized the primacy of Russian law over international norms, prohibited same-sex marriages, and mentioned "belief in God" as a core value. Almost 78% of voters approved the constitutional amendments during the week-long vote that ended on July 1. The turnout was 68%.