Texas attorney general agrees to stop blocking constituents from following him on Twitter

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has agreed to stop blocking constituents from following his personal Twitter account after a federal lawsuit argued the attorney general violated the First Amendment rights of Texans when he banned them from viewing his tweets, according to a federal court filing in Austin. 

In April, the Knight First Amendment Institute, along with the ACLU of Texas, filed a federal complaint claiming that Paxton violated the constitutional rights of nine individuals listed on the lawsuit when he blocked them from his Twitter page. The lawsuit argued that Paxton's Twitter account is a public forum and banning critics deprives those who remain in the public forum the chance to hear opposition voices.  "We're pleased that Attorney General Paxton has agreed to stop blocking people from his Twitter account simply because he doesn't like what they have to say," said Katie Fallow, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute said in a prepared statement. "Multiple courts have recognized that government officials who use their social media accounts for official purposes violate the First Amendment if they block people from those accounts on the basis of viewpoint. What Paxton was doing was unconstitutional," she added.