WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court today adopted a new rule for determining when public officials who use personal social media accounts may be liable when they block people or delete comments. The decision came in Lindke v. Freed, a case claiming that a public official violated the First Amendment by blocking a constituent from his social media account.

The following can be attributed to Katie Fallow, senior counsel of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. 

“We’re gratified that the Court recognized that public officials must comply with the First Amendment when they use their personal social media accounts to carry out their official duties, as former President Trump did with his Twitter account. The Court was also 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. We hope that in implementing the new test crafted by the Supreme Court today, the courts will be mindful of the importance of protecting speech and dissent in these digital public forums.”

Last June, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a consolidated amicus brief with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation in both cases. The brief emphasized that because government officials and agencies use social media extensively to communicate with constituents, provide important public notices, and debate key policy and political issues, these are vital spaces for public discourse. It asked the Court to confirm that the First Amendment forbids public officials from blocking people based on their viewpoints from social media accounts that the officials use to carry out their governmental duties. Read the brief here.

In Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, the Institute successfully argued that the First Amendment applied to then-President Trump’s nominally personal Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, because it was used as an extension of his office. Since that time, numerous courts have agreed with the Knight Institute’s arguments. Read more about that case here. 

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected].