Former President Donald Trump’s frequent use of Twitter lurked in the background as the justices weighed whether an official’s online activities can constitute government action.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that members of the public in some circumstances can sue public officials for blocking them on social media platforms, deciding a pair of cases against the backdrop of former President Donald Trump’s contentious and colorful use of Twitter.
The court ruled unanimously that officials can be deemed “state actors” when making use of social media and can therefore face litigation if they block or mute a member of the public.
In the two cases before the justices, they ruled that disputes involving a school board member in Southern California and a city manager in Michigan should be sent back to lower courts for the new legal test to be applied.
I’d like to point out that this thread began with me asserting that the left and right are both anti-free-speech in different contexts. I was told I was wrong. I asked how I was wrong. Then you stepped in and began arguing against free speech in certain situations. This is my precise point. The left is not pro-free-speech, but pro-speech-I-like, just like the right. Why should the right respect your speech rights if you don’t respect their speech rights? The end result is everyone’s speech rights get chipped away, and eventually speech restrictions will be used by antidemocratic forces within the government to entrench themselves.