Supreme Court unanimously rules that public officials can be sued for blocking critics on social media

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett Justice noted that the personal social media accounts of public officials often present an ‘ambiguous’ status because they mix official announcements with personal content.

The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Friday that government officials who post about work-related topics on their personal social media accounts can be held liable for violating the First Amendment rights of constituents by blocking their access or deleting their critical comments.

In a 15-page opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that the personal social media accounts of public officials often present an “ambiguous” status because they mix official announcements with personal content.

The court ruled in two cases where people were blocked after leaving critical comments on social media accounts of public officials.

The first case involved two elected members of a California school board — the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees — who blocked concerned parents from their Facebook and Twitter accounts after leaving critical comments.

The court upheld the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said the board members had violated the parents’ free speech rights.

The second case before the court concerned James Freed, Port Huron, Michigan’s city manager who had blocked constituent Kevin Lindke from commenting on his Facebook page after deleting his remarks about the city’s COVID-19 pandemic policies.

Lindke believed that Freed had violated the First Amendment by doing so and sued Freed.

Freed maintained that he launched his Facebook page long before becoming a public official, arguing that most of the content on his account concerned family-related matters.

Justice Barrett explained:

Like millions of Americans, James Freed maintained a Facebook account on which he posted about a wide range of topics, including his family and his job. Like most of those Americans, Freed occasionally received unwelcome comments on his posts. In response, Freed took a step familiar to Facebook users: He deleted the comments and blocked those who made them.

For most people with a Facebook account, that would have been the end of it. But Kevin Lindke, one of the unwelcome commenters, sued Freed for violating his right to free speech. Because the First Amendment binds only the government, this claim is a nonstarter if Freed posted as a private citizen. Freed, however, is not only a private citizen but also the city manager of Port Huron, Michigan — and while Freed insists that his Facebook account was strictly personal, Lindke argues that Freed acted in his official capacity when he silenced Lindke’s speech.

When a government official posts about job-related topics on social media, it can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private. We hold that such speech is attributable to the State only if the official (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when he spoke on social media.

In the end, the high court sent Lindke’s case back to the Sixth Circuit Federal Appeals Court for a second look.

Perhaps reflecting continued ambiguity following the court’s ruling, both defendant Freed and plaintiff Lindke declared victory.

“I am very pleased with the outcome the justices came to,” Freed told ABC News in a statement. “The Court rejected the plaintiff’s appearance test and further refined a test for review by the Sixth Circuit. We are extremely confident we will prevail there once more.”

Lindke was more effusive and told ABC News that he was “ecstatic” with the court’s decision.

“A 9-0 decision is very decisive and is a clear indicator that public officials cannot hide behind personal social media accounts when discussing official business,” said Lindke.

Legal experts called attention to the persistence of gray area in the law regarding social media due to the narrowness of the court’s decision.

“This case doesn’t tell us much new about how to understand the liability of the 20 million people who work in local, state, administrative or federal government in the U.S. … just that the question is complicated,” Kate Klonick, an expert on online-platform regulation who teaches at St. John’s Law School, told The Washington Post.

Katie Fallow, senior counsel for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told the Post that the court’s ruling does not sufficiently address public officials’ widespread use of personal “shadow accounts,” which constituents often perceive as official.

Fallow said the court was “right to hold that public officials can’t immunize themselves from First Amendment liability merely by using their personal accounts to conduct official business.”

We are disappointed, though, that the Court did not adopt the more practical test used by the majority of the courts of appeals, which appropriately balanced the free speech interests of public officials with those of the people who want to speak to them on their social media accounts.

According to The Hill, the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of 17 states and National Republican Senatorial Committee sided with officials, arguing in favor of their blocks, while the ACLU backed the cons

Friday’s ruling is only the first of several this term that deal with the relationship between government and social media.

“On Feb. 26, the justices heard argument[s] in a pair of challenges to controversial laws in Florida and Texas that seek to regulate large social-media companies,” explained Amy Howe on Scotusblog.com. “And on Monday the justices will hear oral arguments in a dispute alleging that the federal government violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to remove false or misleading content. Decisions in those cases are expected by summer.”

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NEWT GINGRICH: Europe’s Elites Were Finally Told To Take A Look In The Mirror

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NEWT GINGRICH: Europe’s Elites Were Finally Told To Take A Look In The Mirror

Published on February 22, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Newt Gingrich

In an amazing show of courage, Vice President J.D. Vance offered an intervention for some of our European allies.

That is the best way to think of the two historic speeches he made in France and Germany last week.

In Paris, Vice President Vance pledged the United States would do whatever it takes to lead the world in the development of Artificial Intelligence. He went on to assert that Europe’s automatic response to regulate technological change rather than adapt to it was doomed to fail.

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Vance warned the Europeans that the Trump administration would retaliate to protect American high-tech companies from being fined and regulated by the European community.

Then, Vance went to the Munich Security Conference. It is the annual meeting of European leaders concerned about defense and threats to peace. The Vice President shocked the Europeans by launching a frontal assault on the decay of their political system.

As Vance put it:

“But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America.”

He then went through a litany of specific complaints about the behavior of different European countries. They ranged from failing to control immigration, suppressing free speech, and Brussels seeking to control and define futures of independent countries such as Hungary and Romania.

The leading French newspaper, Le Monde (their equivalent of the New York Times) asserted that the American Vice President was declaring “ideological war on Europe.”

Le Monde was right. The European elites have been decaying for at least two generations. They hide behind their privileged status and take ideological positions that feel good but are destructive. Europe’s failures are devastating for most everyday Europeans.

I have personal knowledge about this. I have a Ph.D. in Modern European History – and I have lived in France, Germany, Belgium and Italy. As a young Army dependent, we were living in France when the French Army came back from Algeria, killed the French Fourth Republic and brought back General Charles de Gaulle to establish the Fifth Republic.

It is now the longest serving non-royal government in French history.

The European elites value each other’s opinions more than they value serving the people of Europe. The European elites live in a fantasy world of green policies that destroy industries and jobs, welfare policies which destroy the work ethic, and immigration policies which undermine the popular culture. They simply hope for a peaceful world without a strong military.

Meanwhile, state enforced speech codes protect Islamic extremists at the expense of local citizens.

The result has been a steady decline of European culture, economic development, and defensive capacity.

The Afghan Islamist who wounded more than two dozen people and killed a mother and her two-year-old daughter with a car two days before the supposed security conference signals the willful avoidance of reality at the heart of the elite European worldview.

To be clear, I admire European civilization. I believe America is far stronger and safer if Europe is healthy and capable of growing and defending itself.

I hope vice president Vance’s intervention at least starts European elites thinking about what must be done to revive their continent.

For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.

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Kash Patel First Statement As FBI Director, Tells Media ‘Bring It On’

Published on February 22, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Mariane Angela

FBI Director Kash Patel made his first statement as director after he was sworn in Friday, with a challenge to the media and a promise of sweeping reforms within the bureau.

Patel began his speech by expressing gratitude towards his supporters, then transitioned into a detailed breakdown of his upcoming plans for the FBI. He also turned to the press and directed any criticisms towards himself to protect his team from the media’s scrutiny.

“I know the media is in here, and if you have a target, that target is right here. It is not the men and women at the FBI. And everything you possibly can [say] about me that’s fake, malicious, slanderous, and defamatory, keep it coming, bring it on, but leave the men and women of the FBI out of it,” Patel said.

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“I promise you the following: There will be accountability within the FBI and outside of the FBI. And we will do it through rigorous constitutional oversight starting this weekend.”

JUST IN: FBI Director Kash Patel makes first statement as FBI director, says accountability is coming to the FBI *this weekend.*

🔥🔥

“I know the media’s in here. And if you have a target, that target’s right here. It’s not the men and women at the FBI.”

“You’ve written… pic.twitter.com/nwBUjQXAel

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 21, 2025

With Attorney General Pam Bondi by his side, Patel said the public can expect a fair and just system under their leadership.

“For those of you who think that there’s going to be a two-tier system of justice, not with Attorney General Bondi, there’s a singular system of justice for all Americans, and there will be accountability,” Patel added. “The reason that this mission is so important is simply the following: 100,000 people last year raped [and] 100,000 people died of CCP fentanyl overdose in heroin [and] 17,000 homicides. Violent crime is out of control.”

Patel was confirmed as President Donald Trump’s new FBI director on Thursday afternoon. The Senate approved his nomination with a close vote of 51-49, despite Democratic lawmakers’ attempts to postpone the confirmation.

Patel, previously the chief of staff to the secretary of Defense during Trump’s first term, gained notoriety for his criticism of the Mueller investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The newly confirmed FBI director also criticized the misuse of surveillance powers, advocating for the establishment of a “24/7 declassification office.”