Far-right congressman sued for blocking activist who brutally mocked him
Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) has been sued for violating the First Amendment rights of a man who mocked his racist tirade, claiming Muslims should have fewer rights than dogs.
The suit, brought by AI entrepreneur Amjad Masad and represented by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, alleges that Fine discriminated against him by viewpoint when he blocked him on X for his sarcastic reply to his post.
The controversy stems from Fine's reaction to a satirical post by Palestinian-American activist Nerdeen Kiswani, who posted, “Finally, NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor pets. Like we’ve said all along, they are unclean.” She was actually making a point about sanitation, and not literally claiming dogs should be restricted under religious law.
Fine, however, took the post seriously, post, “If they force us to choose the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” and introduced a bill called the Protecting Puppies From Sharia Act, which would defund any jurisdiction that restricts dogs under Islamic doctrine — something that no one was actually proposing.
Masad mocked Fine's behavior, replying to the post about choosing between dogs and Muslims with, “Are you talking about what’s for lunch?” after which he swiftly found himself blocked.
"Courts have recognized that the interactive component of an official’s social-media page generally constitutes a forum for speech and that banning a critic from that interactive component constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination," read the legal complaint. "For these reasons, Defendant’s block of Plaintiff excludes him from viewing and participating in the Interactive Space in the manner available to unblocked users, including replying to posts, engaging in threads, and interacting with Defendant’s posts and other users in that forum."
President Donald Trump himself has faced similar lawsuits, with courts in his first term generally siding against his right to block people he disagrees with on X, which at the time was known as Twitter.