USA Today reports:
A unanimous Supreme Court on Friday defined when the personal social media account of a public official is a government action, trying to settle whether constituents can be blocked from commenting or from following those accounts.
A public official may block constituents, the court said, unless the official had the power to speak on the government’s behalf and intended to do so through their personal social media account.
“State officials have a choice about the capacity in which they choose to speak,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her opinion for the court. “If the public employee does not use his speech in furtherance of his official responsibilities, he is speaking in his own voice.”
NBC News reports:
Factors such as whether the account is marked as official and the official is invoking his or her legal authority in making a formal announcement can be taken into account, Barrett said. “In some circumstances, the post’s content and function might make the plaintiff’s argument a slam dunk,” she added
Trump himself was sued when he was president, with the courts ruling against him, noting that he often used his Twitter account to make official announcements. But that lawsuit was tossed out as moot once he left office in January 2021.
I’ve been blocked by Trump’s Twitter account since 2017, despite the two previous rulings that said he can’t do that.
The US Supreme Court said public officials can sometimes be sued for restricting access to their private social media feeds, ruling in two cases that evoked former President Donald Trump’s efforts to block people from his Twitter account. https://t.co/GHi7A6P3rh
— Bloomberg (@business) March 15, 2024
In some instances, Americans can sue public officials who block them on social media, the U.S. Supreme Court rules. https://t.co/BnCWXa6Khj
— The Recount (@therecount) March 15, 2024