It's more than just a 'saying': Courts Consider

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Courts Considered Trump’s Twitter in Ruling

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the the executive order singles out Muslims -- and points to the president’s June 5 Tweet storm as evidence.

By Joseph P. Williams, Staff Writer June 12, 2017, at 6:16 p.m.

U.S. News & World Report

Courts Considered Trump’s Twitter in Ruling



President Donald Trump's tweeter feed is photographed on a computer screen in Washington, Monday. April 3, 2017. The National Archives is telling the White House to keep each of President Donald Trump's tweets, even those he deletes or corrects. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

Courts are considering the president's tweets to be official statements from the White House.(J. David Ake/AP)

When they rejected President Donald Trump's executive order blocking travel from several Muslim-majority countries as unconstitutional, two sets of federal appellate judges pointed to Trump's history of public statements calling it a "Muslim ban," including messages Trump posted on Twitter.

On the heels of press secretary Sean Spicer's declaration that Trump's tweets are "official statements by the President of the United States," immigration advocates on Monday responded to a Justice Department Supreme Court appeal of the federal court ruling by asking the high court to consider Trump's tweets, and his Twitter account, as "authority" – content like law review articles, legal cases and news reports that lawyers use to bolster their arguments.


It's perhaps the first time the high court has been asked to consider Twitter in that way, setting up what could be legal parameters for considering Trump's statements on that medium as official White House policy. It comes the same day that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals specifically cited the president's communications on Twitter as part of the rationale for rejecting Trump's travel ban.

"Throughout these judicial proceedings, the president has continued to make generalized, often inflammatory, statements about the Muslim faith and its adherents," including on Twitter.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, tells U.S. News in an email that the unusual filing could set a legal precedent. If the court sides with the advocates, "it could mean that courts would consider Twitter relevant in deciding what the user meant in making a decision," particularly if other courts "are persuaded about the value of using it."

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