SCOTUS Rules Public Officials Can Sometimes Be Sued For Blocking Critics On Social Media
HuffPost
A unanimous Supreme Court has ruled on an issue that first arose for the high court in a case involving then-President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Friday that public officials can sometimes be sued for blocking their critics on social media, an issue that first arose for the high court in a case involving then-President Donald Trump.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the court, said that officials who use personal accounts to make official statements may not be free to delete comments about those statements or block critics altogether.
On the other hand, Barrett wrote, “State officials have private lives and their own constitutional rights.”
The court ruled in two cases involving lawsuits filed by people who were blocked after leaving critical comments on social media accounts belonging to school board members in Southern California and a city manager in Port Huron, Michigan, northeast of Detroit. They are similar to a case involving Trump and his decision to block critics from his personal account on Twitter, now known as X. The justices dismissed the case after Trump left office in January 2021.
The cases forced the court to deal with the competing free speech rights of public officials and their constituents, all in a rapidly evolving virtual world. They are among five social media cases on the court’s docket this term.
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