Supreme Court to hear First Amendment cases regarding public officials’ social media accounts

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear arguments in two cases regarding whether the First Amendment applies to public officials’ social media accounts when they block constituents online.

The appeals, which will be heard this fall, come after a federal court ruled in 2018 that former President Donald Trump violated individuals’ constitutional rights by blocking them from his personal Twitter account, though the Supreme Court tossed the ruling after he left office.

At issue in the case of O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier is whether two elected members of a school board near Southern California can block the parents of students in their district from their personal social media accounts.

The parents felt that their concerns over race relations in the school district were going unheard and turned to social media to post hundreds of repetitive comments on the school board members’ Facebook and Twitter pages. The two school board members eventually blocked the parents for spamming their accounts.

In another case, Lindke v. Freed, the city manager of Port Huron, Mich., blocked a resident from his Facebook page who was critical of the city’s Covid-19 restrictions.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the parents’ rights were violated in the California case, while the Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of the Michigan official.

The 2018 ruling found that Trump and one of his aides cannot point to the president’s own First Amendment interests as justification for blocking the individuals — an argument his legal team had made. But in 2021, the Supreme Court threw away that ruling.