Supreme Court Dismisses a Suit Against Trump

Donald Trump was once president, and he once had a Twitter account. But because neither of those things is true anymore, the Supreme Court is tossing a lawsuit related to them both. The court vacated a lower-court ruling that Trump violated the constitutional rights of critics by blocking them from his since-banned Twitter account, reports the Hill. Those blocked users had sued Trump, accusing him of running afoul of the First Amendment. In the decision released Monday, the court didn't rule on the merits of the case, reports Axios. Instead, it declared the issue moot given that Trump lost his bid for reelection.

But Justice Clarence Thomas, for one, thinks the court will have to revisit what he sees as a bigger picture raised in the dispute—the amount of power wielded by Twitter and other tech giants, per the Washington Post. It's "unprecedented" to have "control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties," Thomas wrote. "We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms.” A new look is needed because "applying old doctrines to new digital platforms is rarely straightforward," he added, per NBC News. (More President Trump stories.)