Supreme Court unanimously rules that public officials can be sued for blocking critics on social media

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett Justice noted that the personal social media accounts of public officials often present an ‘ambiguous’ status because they mix official announcements with personal content.

The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Friday that government officials who post about work-related topics on their personal social media accounts can be held liable for violating the First Amendment rights of constituents by blocking their access or deleting their critical comments.

In a 15-page opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that the personal social media accounts of public officials often present an “ambiguous” status because they mix official announcements with personal content.

The court ruled in two cases where people were blocked after leaving critical comments on social media accounts of public officials.

The first case involved two elected members of a California school board — the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees — who blocked concerned parents from their Facebook and Twitter accounts after leaving critical comments.

The court upheld the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said the board members had violated the parents’ free speech rights.

The second case before the court concerned James Freed, Port Huron, Michigan’s city manager who had blocked constituent Kevin Lindke from commenting on his Facebook page after deleting his remarks about the city’s COVID-19 pandemic policies.

Lindke believed that Freed had violated the First Amendment by doing so and sued Freed.

Freed maintained that he launched his Facebook page long before becoming a public official, arguing that most of the content on his account concerned family-related matters.

Justice Barrett explained:

Like millions of Americans, James Freed maintained a Facebook account on which he posted about a wide range of topics, including his family and his job. Like most of those Americans, Freed occasionally received unwelcome comments on his posts. In response, Freed took a step familiar to Facebook users: He deleted the comments and blocked those who made them.

For most people with a Facebook account, that would have been the end of it. But Kevin Lindke, one of the unwelcome commenters, sued Freed for violating his right to free speech. Because the First Amendment binds only the government, this claim is a nonstarter if Freed posted as a private citizen. Freed, however, is not only a private citizen but also the city manager of Port Huron, Michigan — and while Freed insists that his Facebook account was strictly personal, Lindke argues that Freed acted in his official capacity when he silenced Lindke’s speech.

When a government official posts about job-related topics on social media, it can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private. We hold that such speech is attributable to the State only if the official (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when he spoke on social media.

In the end, the high court sent Lindke’s case back to the Sixth Circuit Federal Appeals Court for a second look.

Perhaps reflecting continued ambiguity following the court’s ruling, both defendant Freed and plaintiff Lindke declared victory.

“I am very pleased with the outcome the justices came to,” Freed told ABC News in a statement. “The Court rejected the plaintiff’s appearance test and further refined a test for review by the Sixth Circuit. We are extremely confident we will prevail there once more.”

Lindke was more effusive and told ABC News that he was “ecstatic” with the court’s decision.

“A 9-0 decision is very decisive and is a clear indicator that public officials cannot hide behind personal social media accounts when discussing official business,” said Lindke.

Legal experts called attention to the persistence of gray area in the law regarding social media due to the narrowness of the court’s decision.

“This case doesn’t tell us much new about how to understand the liability of the 20 million people who work in local, state, administrative or federal government in the U.S. … just that the question is complicated,” Kate Klonick, an expert on online-platform regulation who teaches at St. John’s Law School, told The Washington Post.

Katie Fallow, senior counsel for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told the Post that the court’s ruling does not sufficiently address public officials’ widespread use of personal “shadow accounts,” which constituents often perceive as official.

Fallow said the court was “right to hold that public officials can’t immunize themselves from First Amendment liability merely by using their personal accounts to conduct official business.”

We are disappointed, though, that the Court did not adopt the more practical test used by the majority of the courts of appeals, which appropriately balanced the free speech interests of public officials with those of the people who want to speak to them on their social media accounts.

According to The Hill, the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of 17 states and National Republican Senatorial Committee sided with officials, arguing in favor of their blocks, while the ACLU backed the cons

Friday’s ruling is only the first of several this term that deal with the relationship between government and social media.

“On Feb. 26, the justices heard argument[s] in a pair of challenges to controversial laws in Florida and Texas that seek to regulate large social-media companies,” explained Amy Howe on Scotusblog.com. “And on Monday the justices will hear oral arguments in a dispute alleging that the federal government violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to remove false or misleading content. Decisions in those cases are expected by summer.”

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Common Vaccines Linked to 38-50% Increased Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s

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Focal Points

Common Vaccines Linked to 38-50% Increased Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s

Published on December 7, 2025

Todayville

By Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

The single largest vaccine–dementia study ever conducted (n=13.3 million) finds risk intensifies with more doses, remains elevated for a full decade, and is strongest after flu and pneumococcal shots.

The single largest and most rigorous study ever conducted on vaccines and dementia — spanning 13.3 million UK adults — has uncovered a deeply troubling pattern: those who received common adult vaccines faced a significantly higher risk of both dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The risk intensifies with more doses, remains elevated for a full decade, and is strongest after influenza and pneumococcal vaccination. With each layer of statistical adjustment, the signal doesn’t fade — it becomes sharper, more consistent, and increasingly difficult to explain away.

And critically, these associations persisted even after adjusting for an unusually wide range of potential confounders, including age, sex, socioeconomic status, BMI, smoking, alcohol-related disorders, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, coronary artery disease, stroke/TIA, peripheral vascular disease, diabetes, chronic kidney and liver disease, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, traumatic brain injury, hypothyroidism, osteoporosis, and dozens of medications ranging from NSAIDs and opioids to statins, antiplatelets, immunosuppressants, and antidepressants.

Even after controlling for this extensive list, the elevated risks remained strong and remarkably stable.

Vaccinated Adults Had a 38% Higher Risk of Dementia

The primary adjusted model showed that adults receiving common adult vaccines (influenza, pneumococcal, shingles, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis) had a:

38% increased risk of developing dementia (OR 1.38)

This alone dismantles the narrative of “vaccines protect the brain,” but the deeper findings are far worse.

Alzheimer’s Disease Risk Is Even Higher — 50% Increased Risk

Buried in the supplemental tables is a more shocking result: when the authors restricted analyses to Alzheimer’s disease specifically, the association grew even stronger.

50% increased risk of Alzheimer’s (Adjusted OR 1.50)

This indicates the effect is not random. The association intensifies for the most devastating subtype of dementia.

Clear Dose–Response Pattern: More Vaccines = Higher Risk

The authors ran multiple dose–response models, and every one of them shows the same pattern:

Dementia (all types)

From eTable 2:

1 vaccine dose → Adjusted OR 1.26 (26% higher risk)
2–3 doses → Adjusted OR 1.32 (32% higher risk)
4–7 doses → Adjusted OR 1.42 (42% higher risk)
8–12 doses → Adjusted OR 1.50 (50% higher risk)
≥13 doses → Adjusted OR 1.55 (55% higher risk)

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) Shows the Same—and Even Stronger—Trend

From eTable 7:

1 dose → Adjusted OR 1.32 (32% higher risk)
2–3 doses → Adjusted OR 1.41 (41% higher risk)
≥4 doses → Adjusted OR 1.61 (61% higher risk)

This is one of the most powerful and unmistakable signals in epidemiology.

Time–Response Curve: Risk Peaks Soon After Vaccination and Remains Elevated for Years

Another signal strongly inconsistent with mere bias: a time-response relationship.

The highest dementia risk occurs 2–4.9 years after vaccination (Adjusted OR 1.56). The risk then slowly attenuates but never returns to baseline, remaining elevated across all time windows.

After 12.5 years, the risk is still meaningfully elevated (Adjusted OR 1.28) — a persistence incompatible with short-term “detection bias” and suggestive of a long-lasting biological impact.

This pattern is what you expect from a biological trigger with long-latency neuroinflammatory or neurodegenerative consequences.

Even After a 10-Year Lag, the Increased Risk Does Not Disappear

When the authors apply a long 10-year lag — meant to eliminate early detection bias — the elevated risk persists:

Dementia: OR 1.20
Alzheimer’s: OR 1.26

If this were simply “people who see doctors more often get diagnosed earlier,” the association should disappear under long lag correction.

Influenza and Pneumococcal Vaccines Drive the Signal

Two vaccines show particularly strong associations:

Influenza vaccine

Dementia: OR 1.39 → 39% higher risk
Alzheimer’s: OR 1.49 → 49% higher risk

Pneumococcal vaccine

Dementia: OR 1.12 → 12% higher risk
Alzheimer’s: OR 1.15 → 15% higher risk

And again, both exhibit dose–response escalation — the hallmark pattern of a genuine exposure–outcome relationship.

Taken together, the findings across primary, supplemental, dose–response, time–response, stratified, and sensitivity analyses paint the same picture:

• A consistent association between cumulative vaccination and increased dementia risk

• A stronger association for Alzheimer’s than for general dementia

• A dose–response effect — more vaccines, higher risk

• A time–response effect — risk peaks after exposure and persists long-term

• Influenza and pneumococcal vaccines strongly drive the signal

• The association remains after 10-year lag correction and active comparator controls

This is what a robust epidemiologic signal looks like.

In the largest single study ever conducted on vaccines and dementia, common adult vaccinations were associated with a 38% higher risk of dementia and a 50% higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The risk increases with more doses, persists for a decade, and is strongest for influenza and pneumococcal vaccines.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

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Censorship Industrial Complex

US Condemns EU Censorship Pressure, Defends X

Published on December 7, 2025

Todayville

By Cindy Harper

JD Vance’s warning lands as lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic want to trade liberty for the illusion of digital order.

Stand against censorship and surveillance, join Reclaim The Net.

US Vice President JD Vance criticized the European Union this week after rumors reportedly surfaced that Brussels may seek to punish X for refusing to remove certain online speech.

In a post on X, Vance wrote, “Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship. The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage.”

His remarks reflect growing tension between the United States and the EU over the future of online speech and the expanding role of governments in dictating what can be said on global digital platforms.

Vance was likely referring to rumors that Brussels intends to impose massive penalties under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a censorship framework that requires major platforms to delete what regulators define as “illegal” or “harmful” speech, with violations punishable by fines up to six percent of global annual revenue.

For Vance, this development fits a pattern he’s been warning about since the spring.

In a May 2025 interview, he cautioned that “The kind of social media censorship that we’ve seen in Western Europe, it will and in some ways, it already has, made its way to the United States. That was the story of the Biden administration silencing people on social media.”

He added, “We’re going to be very protective of American interests when it comes to things like social media regulation. We want to promote free speech. We don’t want our European friends telling social media companies that they have to silence Christians or silence conservatives.”

Yet while the Vice President points to Europe as the source of the problem, a similar agenda is also advancing in Washington under the banner of “protecting children online.”

This week’s congressional hearing on that subject opened in the usual way: familiar talking points, bipartisan outrage, and the recurring claim that online censorship is necessary for safety.

The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade convened to promote a bundle of bills collectively branded as the “Kids Online Safety Package.”

The session, titled “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online,” quickly turned into a competition over who could endorse broader surveillance and moderation powers with the most moral conviction.

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) opened the hearing by pledging that the bills were “mindful of the Constitution’s protections for free speech,” before conceding that “laws with good intentions have been struck down for violating the First Amendment.”

Despite that admission, lawmakers from both parties pressed ahead with proposals requiring digital ID age verification systems, platform-level content filters, and expanded government authority to police online spaces; all similar to the EU’s DSA censorship law.

Vance has cautioned that these measures, however well-intentioned, mark a deeper ideological divide. “It’s not that we are not friends,” he said earlier this year, “but there’re gonna have some disagreements you didn’t see 10 years ago.”

That divide is now visible on both sides of the Atlantic: a shared willingness among policymakers to restrict speech for perceived social benefit, and a shrinking space for those who argue that freedom itself is the safeguard worth protecting.

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, join Reclaim The Net.

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