By MARK SHERMAN (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Friday that public officials can sometimes face lawsuits for blocking their critics on social media. This issue first came up for the high court in a case involving then-President Donald Trump.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, speaking for the court, stated that officials who use personal accounts to make official statements might not be allowed to delete comments about those statements or block critics completely.
Barrett also mentioned, “State officials have private lives and their own constitutional rights.”
The court made decisions in two cases regarding lawsuits brought by individuals who were blocked after leaving critical comments on social media accounts of school board members in Southern California and a city manager in Port Huron, Michigan, northeast of Detroit. These cases are similar to the one involving Trump and his decision to block critics from his personal account on Twitter, now known as X. The justices dismissed the case after Trump left office in January 2021.
The cases led the court to address the conflicting free speech rights of public officials and their constituents, all in a rapidly changing virtual world. They are among five social media cases on the court’s docket this term.
Appeals courts in San Francisco and Cincinnati had differing opinions on when personal accounts become official, and the Supreme Court did not support either ruling, sending the cases back to the appeals courts to implement the standard the justices described on Friday.
“When a government official posts about job-related topics on social media, it can be hard to tell if the speech is official or private,” Barrett said.
Officials need to have the authority to speak on behalf of their governments and intend to use it for their posts to be seen as essentially the government’s, according to Barrett. In such cases, they have to allow criticism, or else they might be sued, she wrote.
In one instance, James Freed, who was appointed the Port Huron city manager in 2014, used the Facebook page he first created while in college to communicate with the public, as well as share the details of his daily life.
In 2020, a resident, Kevin Lindke, used the page to comment multiple times from three Facebook profiles, including criticizing the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Freed blocked all three accounts and deleted Lindke’s comments. Lindke sued, but the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Freed, noting that his Facebook page discussed his roles as “father, husband, and city manager.”
The other case involved two elected members of a California school board, the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees. The members, Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff and T.J. Zane, used their personal Facebook and Twitter accounts to communicate with the public. Two parents, Christopher and Kimberly Garnier, left critical comments and replies to posts on the board members’ accounts and were blocked. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the board members had violated the parents’ free speech rights by doing so. Zane no longer serves on the school board.
The court’s other cases related to social media have a more biased taste. The justices are reviewing laws in Florida and Texas, passed by Republicans, that prevent large social media companies from removing posts based on their viewpoints. The tech companies argued that these laws violate their First Amendment rights. The laws show that Republicans believe the platforms unfairly censor conservative views.
Next week, the court will consider a challenge from Missouri and Louisiana to the Biden administration’s efforts to address controversial social media posts about topics such as COVID-19 and election security. The states claim that the Democratic administration has been unconstitutionally pressuring the platforms to crack down on conservative stances.
The cases decided Friday are O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, 22-324, and Lindke v. Freed, 22-611.
