In a landmark decision, the US Supreme Court has established a significant precedent for free speech in the digital realm. On Friday, the court unanimously ruled that, under certain conditions, government officials may face lawsuits for violating the First Amendment if they block critics on social media. This decision introduces a critical test for assessing whether officials are acting within their governmental capacity when they silence online dissent.
The rulings from the Supreme Court, which emerged from two cases in California and Michigan, bring clarity to the issue of public officials’ actions on social media.
The justices emphasized that the First Amendment’s free speech protections typically apply to government actors, rather than private individuals.
We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.
According to the new criteria, an official is deemed to be engaged in governmental action if they possess “actual authority to speak on behalf of the state on a particular matter” and are seen “purporting to exercise that authority in the relevant posts.”
The Court’s intervention became necessary following the dismissal of lower court rulings in these two cases. Plaintiffs in both instances claimed First Amendment violations after they were barred from engaging with local officials’ social media accounts due to their critical comments. The justices instructed the lower courts to reevaluate these cases using the newly established standard.
This issue of blocking users on social media, often a tactic to suppress dissent, was previously considered by the Supreme Court in 2021. The case involved former President Donald Trump’s attempt to block critics on a platform then known as Twitter. However, the Court did not resolve the issue at the time, deeming it moot after Trump’s presidency ended.
At the core of both cases were claims of First Amendment rights infringement. In California, two Poway public school board trustees, Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff and T.J. Zane, faced a lawsuit from parents they had blocked on social media platforms, including Facebook, for posting hundreds of critical comments on various issues. A federal judge and the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals both found that the trustees violated the parents’ First Amendment rights.
Similarly, in Michigan, City Manager James Freed blocked resident Kevin Lindke from his public Facebook page after Lindke posted critical remarks about the city’s COVID-19 response. While a federal judge and the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals initially sided with Freed, the Supreme Court’s decision now casts these rulings in a new light.
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