Supreme Court rules public officials can sometimes be sued for blocking critics on social media

WASHINGTON — A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Friday that government officials can sometimes be sued for blocking their critics on social media, an issue first raised at the Supreme Court in a case involving then-President Donald Trump.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the court, said officials who use personal accounts to make official statements may not have the discretion to delete comments on those statements or block critics altogether.

On the other hand, Barrett wrote, “State officials have private lives and their own constitutional rights.”

The court ruled in two cases involving lawsuits filed by people 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. They resemble a case 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 forced the court to address the competing free speech rights of government officials and their constituents, all in a rapidly evolving virtual world. They are among five social media cases before the court this term.

The appeals courts in San Francisco and Cincinnati had made conflicting decisions about when personal bills become official, and the Supreme Court did not embrace either ruling, sending the cases back to the appeals courts to apply the standard the justices set Friday .

“When a government official posts on social media about work-related topics, it can be difficult to determine whether the speech is official or private,” Barrett said.

Officials should have the authority to speak on behalf of their government and plan to use it to essentially treat their posts as those of the government, Barrett wrote. In such cases, they must allow criticism or risk being sued, she wrote.

In one case, James Freed, who was appointed Port Huron city manager in 2014, used the Facebook page he first created while in college to communicate with the public and share the details of daily life.

In 2020, a resident, Kevin Lindke, used the page several times to comment from three Facebook profiles, including criticism of 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 talked about his role 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 TJ 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 messages on the board members’ accounts and were blocked. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the board members had violated the parents’ freedom of expression. Daan is no longer a member of the school board.

The court’s other social media cases have a more partisan flavor. The justices are reviewing Republican-passed laws in Florida and Texas that ban major social media companies from removing posts because of the views they express. The tech companies said the laws violate their First Amendment rights. The laws reflect a view among Republicans that the platforms disproportionately censor conservative views.

Next week, the court will hear a challenge from Missouri and Louisiana to the Biden administration’s efforts to combat controversial social media posts on topics such as COVID-19 and election security. The states allege that the Democratic administration unconstitutionally forced the platforms to crack down on conservative views.

The cases decided Friday are O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, 22-324, and Lindke v. Freed, 22-611.

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