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.

Comments

Re:"Trolls"

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll, Bully, Predator and finally Terrorist. Then you get shot.

Multiple levels of blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Multiple levels of blocking

[AlwinBarni]

Does not seem complicated to me.

Facebook, a private company, created a medium to exchange ideas (communicate), they set up the rules on this new platform, a politician (being a public persona) cannot silence (ban) criticism, whilst a private person can - plain and simple.

For me this limited privacy for politicians (for the time of their service) is a fair price to pay for the power bestowed on them by people they (suppose to) represent.

I understand it. I even described it.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What about the courts?

[sycodon]

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.