For Evan Boornazian, there have been plenty of times he’s watched the comment section on social media get heated.

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“There have been people before who didn’t agree with my viewpoints on some things and called me names,” he said. “When you harass somebody or even do something really hateful or say something mean over and over again, that’s crossing the line.”

The question of what really is considered “crossing the line” is on many minds now after the recent Supreme Court ruling.

Counterman v. Colorado lays out a case where, from 2014 to 2016, Billy Counterman sent hundreds of harassing messages to a woman over Facebook. The two never met, and she did not respond. She tried repeatedly to block him but each time, Counterman created a new Facebook account.

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The justices ruled in favor of Counterman, saying there was no evidence he intended to carry out a threat.

It now means the government, in cases moving forward, has to prove the defendant acted maliciously.

“What this essentially does is, it makes it more difficult to stop online harassment because it now bears the line of free speech,” social media expert Dr. Steve Webb said. “I think this court case is going to muddy that to the point to where we’re going to have a more difficult time stopping that harassment before it gets to tragedy.”

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The American Civil Liberties Union is in favor of the ruling, saying in a prepared statement: “In a world rife with misunderstanding and miscommunications, people would be chilled from speaking altogether if they could be jailed for failing to predict how their words would be received.”

Boornazian said it’s “a really unfortunate situation for people who are online.”

“I feel like that’s really just allowing people to spew hatred and bigotry,” he said.

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