US Supreme Court to decide if public officials can block critics on
social media
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[October 31, 2023]
By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court is set on Tuesday to
explore free speech rights in the digital age in cases from California
and Michigan involving whether public officials may legally block others
on social media, a function often used on these platforms to stifle
critics.
Lower courts reached different conclusions in the two cases, reflecting
the legal uncertainty over whether such social media activity is bound
by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment limits on the government's
ability to restrict speech.
The Supreme Court is tasked with deciding whether the public officials
engaged in a "state action" in blocking critics from social media
accounts or were merely acting in their personal capacity. The First
Amendment constrains government actors but not private individuals.
The first case involves two public school board trustees from Poway,
California who appealed a lower court's ruling in favor of parents who
sued them after being blocked from the personal accounts of the
officials on X, called Twitter at the time, and Facebook, which is owned
by Meta Platforms.
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The second case involves a Michigan man's appeal after a lower court
rejected his lawsuit challenging a Port Huron city official who blocked
him on Facebook.
President Joe Biden's administration has sided with the officials in
both cases. Free speech advocacy groups urged the justices to back the
plaintiffs. The Supreme Court previously confronted the issue in 2021 in
litigation over former President Donald Trump's effort to block critics
on Twitter, but failed to decide the matter by deeming the case moot
after he left office.
The justices also are due to decide other important cases involving
speech on social media during their current nine-month term. One
involves a challenge to Republican-backed state laws limiting the
ability of social media platforms to remove or moderate content deemed
objectionable or misinformation. Another involves a bid to prevent
Biden's administration from encouraging such content moderation.
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The California case to be argued on Tuesday involves Michelle
O'Connor-Ratcliff and T.J. Zane, elected trustees of the Poway
Unified School District. They blocked Christopher and Kimberly
Garnier, the parents of three students at district schools, after
the couple made hundreds of critical posts on issues including race
and school finances.
Zane and O'Connor-Ratcliff both had public Facebook pages
identifying them as government officials. The parents sued
O'Connor-Ratcliff and Zane, claiming their free speech rights under
the First Amendment were violated.
A federal judge in California sided with the parents and the San
Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling
that Zane and O'Connor-Ratcliff had presented their social media
accounts as "channels of communication with the public" about school
board business.
"When state actors enter that virtual world and invoke their
government status to create a forum for such expression," the 9th
Circuit wrote, "the First Amendment enters with them."
In the Michigan case, Port Huron resident Kevin Lindke sued after
City Manager James Freed blocked him from his public Facebook page
following critical posts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lindke
accused Freed of violating his First Amendment rights. Freed's
account also was a public Facebook page identifying him as a public
figure.
A federal judge ruled in favor of Freed in 2021 and the
Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year agreed.
The 6th Circuit found that Freed's blocking of Lindke did not
constitute an official act.
(Reporting by John Kruzel and Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by
Will Dunham)
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