The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether public officials can block criticism of them on social media.
The court is examining two cases that had vastly different outcomes. In one, Garnier v. Poway Unified Sch. Dist., Christopher and Kimberly Garnier — who had three children in the school district — sued Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff and T.J. Zane, who were members of the Poway School board and had blocked posts critical of them on social media. A California federal judge ruled for the couple and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the ruling last July.
The second case involved Port Huron, Michigan resident Kevin Lindke, who was blocked by City Manager James Freed from his public Facebook page. Lindke sued Freed in federal court, but a federal judge ruled for Freed in 2021. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the ruling last July.
After O’Connor-Ratcliff and Zane were elected, they changed their public Facebook pages to reflect their board positions. O’Connor-Ratcliff “added a “Political Info” section showing her “Current Office” as “Board of Education President, Poway Unified School District.” Her “About” section identified her as a “Government Official.” Zane changed his Facebook page to identify his position as a “Poway Unified School District Trustee” and in the “About” section he also identified himself as a “Government Official.”
O’Connor-Ratcliff and Zane claimed that the Garniers’ posts disrupted readers from seeing their own posts. California District Judge Thomas J. Whelan wrote in 2019 that “if the Garniers’ comments did not disrupt the original posts, it is reasonable to infer that MOR and Zane’s claimed justification for blocking the Garniers was a pretext and that they actually blocked the Garniers because of the content of their comments.”
In May 2018, a federal judge ruled that former President Trump’s decision to block Twitter users critical of him violated the First Amendment because Twitter was a public forum. “”No government official — including the President — is above the law,” the judge wrote. A federal appeals court upheld the decision in 2019; Judge Barrington D. Parker wrote that the First Amendment bars officials using social media accounts for government purposes from excluding people from an “otherwise open online dialogue” because the official found their comments objectionable.
“This debate, as uncomfortable and as unpleasant as it frequently may be, is nonetheless a good thing,” Parker wrote. “In resolving this appeal, we remind the litigants and the public that if the First Amendment means anything, it means that the best response to disfavored speech on matters of public concern is more speech, not less.”