Name: Sen. Cornyn unblocks Twitter critic after lawsuit
Brand: statesman.com
SKU: statesman-com-2
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Sen. Cornyn unblocks Twitter critic after lawsuit

preview

Nicole Cobler / ncobler@statesman.comView CommentsOne day after an Austin man sued U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in federal court for banning him from Cornyn’s Twitter feed, the Texas Republican unblocked him Friday.Tod Beardsley, the director of research at Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Rapid7, argued that Cornyn engaged in “viewpoint-based discrimination and censorship” on a public forum.But after the American-Statesman contacted Cornyn’s office for comment, a spokesman for the senator said Beardsley was “inadvertently” blocked. By Friday afternoon, Beardsley was able to access Cornyn’s Twitter feed again.Beardsley, who is based in Austin, is verified on Twitter under the handle @TODB and has more than 7,000 followers.“I honestly and truly have no idea why Sen. Cornyn blocked me,” he told the Statesman, adding that he regularly tweets about election security and interacts with his elected officials.Cornyn has more than 273,000 followers on Twitter, using the handle @JohnCornyn in his official capacity. He does not have another public account.Well, after phone calls, emails, letters, and faxes, I cannot get to unblock me. Looks like we're headed to court for real.Follow the case at I'm also launching a hashtag b/c that's what people do apparently: — Tod Beardsley (@todb) Cornyn blocked Beardsley within the past 12 months, according to the lawsuit. He said he sent a letter to Cornyn’s office about the ban but did not hear back.“Cornyn has knowingly and willfully censored and punished (Beardsley), and others, with a reckless and callous disregard for constitutional rights,” the lawsuit said.Multiple users tweeted in the past month that they too had been blocked by the senator.Kay Bell, a writer for the blog Don’t Mess With Taxes, that she was blocked by Cornyn. She also shared a screenshot with the American-Statesman, showing that she was still blocked from his official feed.Bell said she was blocked March 28, after criticizing Cornyn in a tweet.It’s not the first time a public official has faced a lawsuit over blocking someone on Twitter.U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, was sued for blocking a critic on Twitter. In November, for the move and settled with the plaintiff, a former elected leader from Brooklyn, N.Y.And a New York-based federal appeals court ruled last year that President Donald Trump can’t block critics from Twitter.Katie Fallow, one of the lead lawyers in the case and a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said the court found that Trump was using his @realDonaldTrump account as an official tool of his administration."Those principles absolutely apply to other government officials who engage in viewpoint discrimination on their public accounts,“ Fallow said.As public officials move to online forums, Fallow said they should not be allowed to sanitize online public debate.“As they migrate this kind of political discourse online, it's important to apply long-standing First Amendment protections to those accounts,” Fallow said.View Comments

Nicole Cobler / ncobler@statesman.comView CommentsOne day after an Austin man sued U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in federal court for banning him from Cornyn’s Twitter feed, the Texas Republican unblocked him Friday.Tod Beardsley, the director of research at Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Rapid7, argued that Cornyn engaged in “viewpoint-based discrimination and censorship” on a public forum.But after the American-Statesman contacted Cornyn’s office for comment, a spokesman for the senator said Beardsley was “inadvertently” blocked. By Friday afternoon, Beardsley was able to access Cornyn’s...

public

Nicole Cobler

statesman.com

Credible

Speculation

Anecdotal Evidence

Generalization

Stacking the Deck

Appeal to Authority

Straw Man

Slippery Slope

Emotional Appeal

Red Herring

False Dilemma

Illogical

Moral Equivalency

Ad Hominem

Correlation w/o Causation

Semantics

Begging the Question

Faulty Analogy

Non Sequitur

Bandwagon

Dogmatism

Failing Occam's Razor

Biased

Pure Opinion

Hit Piece

Racial Bias

National Bias

Religious Bias

Financial Incentive

Political Agenda

Gender Bias

Misused Image/Video

Study Misinterpreted

Mistake

Misused Term

Science Misrepresented

Factual Error

Satire

Surface Level

Lack of Reliable Sources

Sensational

Not Credible

Investigative

Balanced

Well Sourced

Great Context

sports

entertainment

U.S.

international

business

technology

science

culture

politics

media

health

Sen. Cornyn unblocks Twitter critic after lawsuit

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS