The US Supreme Court ruled Friday that public officials can be sued for blocking users on social media if the official posts about state matters and is authorized to speak for the state.
The court decided that blocking users only qualifies as “state action” under 42 U.S.C § 1983, which authorizes lawsuits against public officials for deprivation of rights if the official “possessed actual authority to speak on the state’s behalf” and used that authority when posting on social media. This means public officials who do not use social media this way cannot be sued for blocking another user.
The Supreme Court crafted this test after hearing two cases in which public officials blocked social media users. In one, Lindke v. Freed, the court considered whether Port Huron, Michigan city manager James Freed could be sued for violating Kevin Lindke’s First Amendment free speech rights by deleting Lindke’s comments and blocking him on Facebook. In another, O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, the court considered whether two school board trustees, Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff and T. J. Zane, could be sued for violating Christopher and Kimberly Garnier’s rights also after deleting their comments and blocking them on Facebook.
The cases came before the court following a circuit split when two federal appeals courts reached different conclusions on similar issues. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that James Freed’s social media activity did not constitute state action, finding that Freed used his social media page in a personal capacity. However, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff and T. J. Zane violated the Garniers’ First Amendment rights and could be held liable as the trustees used “their social media pages as public fora in carrying out their official duties.”
During oral arguments in both cases before the Supreme Court, the officials’ attorneys argued that their social media pages were managed in a personal capacity. Conversely, the citizens’ lawyers argued that the court should consider how the pages were being used and what information was being conveyed.
The court found that merely presenting oneself as a public official on social media does not automatically bar officials from blocking other users. In her opinion in Lindke for a unanimous court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote:
In sum, a defendant like Freed must have actual authority rooted in written law or longstanding custom to speak for the State. That authority must extend to speech of the sort that caused the alleged rights deprivation. If the plaintiff cannot make this threshold showing of authority, he cannot establish state action.
However, Barrett also considered the effect of blocking a user on Facebook, which prevents them from commenting on any of a page’s posts. The justice added:
The bluntness of Facebook’s blocking tool highlights the cost of a “mixed use” social-media account: If page-wide blocking is the only option, a public official might be unable to prevent someone from commenting on his personal posts without risking liability for also preventing comments on his official posts. A public official who fails to keep personal posts in a clearly designated personal account therefore exposes himself to greater potential liability.
The court sent both Lindke and O’Connor-Ratcliff back to the Sixth and Ninth Circuits, respectively, for the appeals courts to apply the Supreme Court’s new test to each case and ultimately determine whether Freed, O’Connor-Ratcliff and Zane can be sued for violating social media users’ First Amendment rights.
