It further permitted the Governor to block individuals from his official Facebook site since doing so in no way blocked them from Facebook or other social media sites, but only from his own.
#HIDE VS DELETE COMMENT ON FACEBOOK FREE#
Denying relief to the plaintiff, the court interestingly noted that while the First Amendment may limit the government’s ability to restrict free speech, it doesn’t require the government to listen to everyone who wishes to speak.
2018)), the district court went so far as to classify the Governor’s official Facebook page as a non-public forum from which he could limit or even delete unwanted posts. While Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites will undoubtedly continue to offer valuable forums for the exchange of information with the public, it would appear that agencies may not be able to directly restrict or delete seemingly offensive posts or ban users who make such posts. As such, any attempt by the Chair to engage in “viewpoint discrimination” by deleting offensive posts on her official Facebook account would violate the First Amendment. 2019)) that the Chair of a county Board of Supervisors had converted a private forum Facebook account into a public forum by inviting posts from her constituents. Nonetheless, reliance on Davison should be extremely limited since the Fourth Circuit most recently held in Davison v. The Fourth Circuit declined to reverse the district court’s decision. Defining the official Facebook page as a “limited public forum,” the court held that the government’s restrictions must only be reasonable. 2017)), the court permitted a county attorney to delete inappropriate posts on his official Facebook page because they were deemed to violate terms that prohibited “off topic” posts. Since Packingham, the federal courts have been mixed on the issue of public entities restricting access to governmentally maintained social media pages. Instead, it suggested that a lesser level of “intermediate scrutiny” would generally apply to evaluating the government’s interest in narrowly restricting access. Although the Court struck down as overly broad a statute banning all registered sex offenders from subscribing to Facebook, it refused to apply the heightened “strict scrutiny” test under the First Amendment to social media. Supreme Court has instructed the lower courts to exercise patience and caution when applying the Constitution to these issues ( Packingham v. Recognizing the law pertaining to the internet is rapidly developing, the U.S. Some of these threats cite instances where agencies have purportedly paid thousands of dollars to avoid such litigation.īefore you go writing checks to these folks, a careful overview of the current law is in order.
Recently, there seems to be a growing number of individuals and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who are threatening agencies with litigation if the agency deletes or blocks posts. Unfortunately, as with any good thing, some people abuse these forums with inappropriate posts. Whether you individually choose to subscribe to social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter, many public safety agencies have found that maintaining a department Facebook page can be an effective and beneficial way to communicate with the public they serve. Such First Amendment issues involve a “matter of public concern” analysis under Connick v. This article has been updated to reflect significant new case law.Īuthor’s note: This article doesn’t address the topic of agencies seeking to restrict or discipline employees for potentially inappropriate posts on the employee’s personal social media account.