Public officials can be held liable for blocking critics on social media

The Supreme Court ruled that public officials who post about topics relating to their work on their personal social media accounts are acting on behalf of the government, and therefore can be held liable for violating the First Amendment when they block their critics, only when they have the power to speak on behalf of the state and are actually exercising that power. The court’s decisions came in a pair of cases, involving local officials in California and Michigan who blocked constituents who made repetitive and critical comments on their personal social media accounts. In O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that two school board members violated the First Amendment when they blocked two parents from their personal Facebook and Twitter accounts, which they used to provide information about the board and its work. The court of appeals reasoned that there was a “close nexus between the Trustees’ use of their social media pages and their official positions.” But in Lindke v. Freed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that because James Freed, the Port Huron city manager, maintained his Facebook page on his own rather than as part of his job, he was not acting as a government official when he blocked a city resident—and therefore there was no First Amendment violation.