Supreme Court Tosses Rulings on Public Officials' Social Media Blockings - Slash...
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Supreme Court Tosses Rulings on Public Officials' Social Media Blockings
The Supreme Court clarified when public officials can block critical constituents from their personal profiles without violating their constitutional protections in a unanimous decision Friday. From a report: After hearing appeals of two conflicting rulings -- one filed against school board members in Southern California and another filed against the city manager of Port Huron, Mich. -- the justices provided no definitive resolution to the disputes and instead sent both cases back to lower courts to apply the new legal test. In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court said state officials cannot block constituents on their personal pages when they have "actual authority to speak on behalf of the State on a particular matter" and "purported to exercise that authority in the relevant posts." "For social-media activity to constitute state action, an official must not only have state authority -- he must also purport to use it," Barrett wrote. The case marked the latest battle over public officials' social media presence when they mesh their official and personal roles. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard the Michigan case, sided with the city manager, James Freed, who deleted comments on his Facebook page left by a resident and blocked several of the resident's profiles. The resident, Kevin Lindke, had criticized Freed over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, court filings indicate.
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I wonder if there has been any ruling on the time sensitivity of public forums. If I am rate limited on twitter, and I cannot see an important message from a government official about a kidnapping / weather event / etc, is that twitter interfering with public communication?
I'm guessing not, due to other sources potentially being relevant, but it is something that might go to a court if someone used a rate limited service as their primary use of communication.
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I'm not sure how that applies here. You're not a public official, so you can block anyone you don't want to see. I do t use Twitter, but I'm assuming that you don't automatically see all replies to a tweet made by some public official that may have hundreds or even thousands of responses to it that wouldn't cause a political figure to block any of the people who made the comment.
This just prevents government actors from blocking possible criticism. -
I don't see how.
This case is about the US First Amendment. Freedom of speech means the government can't silence you for having a different viewpoint, when a government official using their social media to communicate official speech then people will follow that account to be informed on what the government is doing and the public will see other people's comments. That means the government official can't start blocking people with dissenting opinions from their profile (though they can block classic abuse, i
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The simple version as I see it is that if Social Media account is used for PERSONAL things only, they can block people, if they use it to communicate within the scope of their job as a public servant then they can't.
Most people can't help themselves and comingle their public life and their private life.
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I'd agree with that (I think that's how I described it).
Though I'm think the motivation to use your social media is greater than you think. If you're a President then you make an official account and everyone follows that. But if you're a city manager the reach of your personal account is going to dwarf your official account (because who follows the city manager?!?). So if you care about your job and actually want to inform the public about something you talk about it using your personal account, and boom,
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This seems backwards. Who would ever look at the private Facebook account of the mayor to get info rather than the official Facebook count of the office of the mayor? For many offices, the residents won't even know the name of the office holders (ie, city council members, county commissioners and clerks, etc).
When running for office, I see most candidates do social media through their campaigns, not from a personal account (barring those no-chance-to-win people who don't have an actual campaign team). Fo
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The ruling was quite clear: The criterion is the purported use for official communication. If some officer publishes statements on his private account purporting to speak for the office, then this is a public statement, and everyone in the public has a right to hear it.
Thus private accounts of non elected officials, who never used their private media accounts for public work, are protected, and the owner of the accounts can block people arbitrarily, as this is an exercise of Free Speech.
Your question is
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>The ruling leaves open a question though: is a social media channel used solely for disseminating official information a suitable place for public discussions?
Lets see, is it in public? Hmmmmm. "Public. Social. Media". Ahhh, the answer is yes. Yes it IS a place for public discussion since you know, it's in PUBLIC. There's this other thing called PRIVATE if they want to go into a circle jerk with samethinkers.
>Ie, should the Fire Department's page turn into a political argument forum?
No, because the f
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So where does this scope begin/end? Is a campaign message they want to send out to their base of supporters within the scope of their job? You could argue that it is since they would be talking about issues/topics related to their official job. If so, does it apply to their competitors also? Or do they get a strategic advantage of being able to block any opposing voice?
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The clarification made by SCOTUS is if the social media is personal then the public official can regulate their personal accounts. Whether the account is truly personal or being used in an official capacity, SCOTUS left that to the lower courts to decide as matter of facts which is the role of lower courts. The ruling underscores the importance of creating official public social media accounts when individuals take public office.
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Right? I feel like that's the obvious solution to that and really every state should have that rule for it's public officials, you can't intermingle your personal and work accounts. Especially when Twitter still does a specific verified badge for government accounts so it's good to keep that truly for public use.
Really if I was a politician I wouldn't even want to have a personal, active social media account. Feels like that is nothing but potential trouble for politicians lol
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They also intermingle their office, their political and personal life accounts together. I do not need to see the City Engineer in hot pants. Honestly if your a public official, best use of limited time, pause that personal account until your last day and create a family account for the baby pictures.
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Some people pay extra for that in Vegas . . . allegedly.
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The clarification made by SCOTUS is if the social media is personal then the public official can regulate their personal accounts. Whether the account is truly personal or being used in an official capacity, SCOTUS left that to the lower courts to decide as matter of facts which is the role of lower courts. The ruling underscores the importance of creating official public social media accounts when individuals take public office.
This Supreme Court "clarification" doesn't help very much.
The big problem with this ruling is that use of the "bully pulpit" is a grey area use of an official capacity. That is, an official may be speaking "in an unofficial capacity" (wink-wink), but no one would pay any attention to them if they weren't that publicly known to be in office, and what they're saying is very much intended to influence public opinion in a way that supports their official capacity goals.
The only useful way to distinguish official from non-official actions must be based on the content of the actions and not on the media. Distinguishing based on the media is useless because it's far too simple to create a "non-official" account that conveys exactly what the official account would have communicated.
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That is why SCOTUS left that question for lower courts on an individual basis.
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If the rate limiting is done by Twitter, then the 1st Amendment doesn't apply whether t's viewpoint neutral or not.
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How is this different from a broadcasted press release where a government official chooses which reporters to call on, can cut them off, or not invite them at all, revoke press passes, etc? Or any government function where members of the public must register before even speaking, and in general not speak whatever they want whenever they want to in the exact same forum the government is using?
This all seems like a bizarre new standard where everyone is allowed to yell over each other and scribble on the wall
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For the press conferences the government doesn't control membership [wikipedia.org]. I don't know the rules for asking questions, but even if I ignored your question you still got to ask it.
As for the other rules they're fine if done in a viewpoint neutral manner.
You can still make rules about being respectful, limits of comments, etc, as long as they're viewpoint neutral.
The controversy was because the blocks weren't based on viewpoint neutral rules, they blocked the posters for criticizing them.
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If your government is relying on a social media app primarily intended for pointless gossip as the primary means of communicating critical safety information your problem is not with Twitter but with your government making stupid decisions.
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Twitter (Xusk) is not just a gossip site. Where I see it appear the most is in dissemination of information (be that info gossip from a celebrity, or important news about road closures or emergency instructions). Facebook and Instagram is more social, but when there's an earthquake or tornado then it's Twitter where people go for up to date information. The official department web page is often the last place to check for recent information.
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Your making these choices from a snapshot of today. Lawyers need things to be facts for 10 years and welded down to be facts for 10 years afterwards before inducing the courts to make it so forever. Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are most likely all the same thing in 7 years, dustbin of history.
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For true emergencies there is a channel that has boundaries tied to service areas of cell sites. We spent billions of dollars on it, use it.
If there is a snow emergency (so unexpected, its chicago and it is feb) and I am half across the world that week.... I don't care until I hit the economy lot.
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The argument in the past was to just not use twitter or any platform you don't feel is treating you fairly. But, places of employment require some form of public social media access or your simply have no future there. Therefore logically that argument reaches now it current resolution. Public(government) officials must be able to act for the good of the public integrity when social media platforms are concerned. Public interests and corporate interests are not the same and there is no such entity as a corp
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If that was a consideration of the public official they would stop Shit posting their political garbage on the office of page.
It use to be for a politician to get out a message of power, he had to call the local news paper and make statements on background. As twitter and facebook replaced the local news paper, most public officials do not have the skillset to keep the office of away from the campaign profile. If you never put the heat out or the policy waste on the office of the mayor site, you will
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