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Politicians Cannot Block Social Media Foes, US Appeals Court Rules (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court said on Monday a Virginia politician violated the Constitution by temporarily blocking a critic from her Facebook page, a decision that could affect President Donald Trump's appeal from a similar ruling in New York. In a 3-0 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Phyllis Randall, chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, violated the First Amendment free speech rights of Brian Davison by banning him for 12 hours from her "Chair Phyllis J. Randall" page.
The ban came after Davison had attended a 2016 town hall meeting, and then under his Facebook profile "Virginia SGP" accused school board members and their relatives of corruption and conflicts of interest. Randall had also removed her original post and all comments, including Davison's. Circuit Judge James Wynn rejected Randall's argument that her Facebook page was a private website, saying the "interactive component" was a public forum and that she engaged in illegal viewpoint discrimination. Davison's speech "occupies the core of the protection afforded by the First Amendment," Wynn wrote.
The ban came after Davison had attended a 2016 town hall meeting, and then under his Facebook profile "Virginia SGP" accused school board members and their relatives of corruption and conflicts of interest. Randall had also removed her original post and all comments, including Davison's. Circuit Judge James Wynn rejected Randall's argument that her Facebook page was a private website, saying the "interactive component" was a public forum and that she engaged in illegal viewpoint discrimination. Davison's speech "occupies the core of the protection afforded by the First Amendment," Wynn wrote.
Troll, Bully, Predator and finally Terrorist. Then you get shot.
Blocking an obnoxious user from your page doesn't infringe on their speech. They can still post their comments, be they valid or obnoxious and obscene trolling on their own page as well as at other locations. I may be missing something but I see this akin to asking a police officer to remove someone who is heckling and disrupting a city council meeting. They aren't removed for having an opinion in opposition, but for disrupting the event. Similarly someone who never contributes anything but hate filled trolling should be block-able. The Government employee or elected official isn't throwing the person in jail or even cutting off their ability to post their information on other venues.
And blocking one individual or even a few from posting on the elected official's page does not deny anyone else the ability to read official statements or quasi-official opinions that may be posted there. The media will still carry the statements. Even if the individual is a reporter, blocking them does not prevent other journalists from participating on the site and reporting what is discussed there.
But this is an issue that really needs a Supreme Court review.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Here's what I find interesting about this:
Facebook itself blocks people. It does it in a blanket fashion based on its terms of service, and it does it in a specific fashion if you do something they don't like and they decide you need to be stepped on. This has exactly the same chilling effect on political speech.
So there are people being prevented / forbidden from interacting on, or even reading, their politician's pages by Facebook, but here the court says the politician can't do that, because it is a 1st amendment issue. Will the courts say that Facebook can't do that either? Facebook is part of the mechanism that presents the information and facilitates the interaction – it doesn't seem like much of a leap from this ruling to telling Facebook it can't shut its doors on people (or telling politicians they can't use Facebook, because it's a limited speech forum.)
I wonder if, eventually, the courts will see the same argument, basically that Facebook has become a public forum and doesn't have the right to step on people's ability to interact with their politicians there.
On the one hand, Facebook is a private enterprise; but on the other, it's being used as a political pulpit, and that combination creates the lack of free access when people are prevented/forbidden to use the platform.
Uh, I'm pretty sure the White House could disallow cameras or reporters in general on premises.
They just can't throw out the ones that they don't like but allow the rest in.
You would only have a point if the Supreme Court allowed cameras from CNN but not from Fox, as-is you just failed to see the point.
Here's the thing: if a politician puts themselves out to the public in a place where the public can't get to them, then they have proactively limited access.
So either the politician is erring in using Facebook because it is not a public space, or Facebook has become a public space and is erring in limiting access to the public.
One way or another, there's a 1st amendment problem here.
I am sorry but no you are the idiot. Trump might be lot of things but there is NOTHING to suggest he would condone mass murder. There is nothing to suggest that anything like what was possible in 1930s Germany could be effected in 21st Century America even if someone had the intent to do so.
You sir are deranged, and utterly lacking in perspective.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
And even that standard is stupid.
The press is invited to the briefings. Only a limited number of the press get passes. You can bet there is no objective evaluation of who gets the passes and who doesn't. It's all going to be subjective, although admittedly carried out in a context of "tradition"...i.e. ABC has ALWAYS had a pass, etc.
I think the courts have generally over stepped their bounds with regards to the Executive Branch. One could argue that the Courts have no jurisdiction what-so-ever in this kind of matter because of the separation of powers.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.