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

Published

2 years ago

7 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

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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Crime

Older man arrested at Kirk shooting admits to protecting real gunman

Published on September 16, 2025

By

MXM logo MxM News 

Quick Hit:

Chaos followed the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk when police first arrested a 71-year-old man who confessed he was only trying to distract them from the real shooter.

Key Details:

  • George Zinn, 71, was arrested after yelling, “I shot him, now shoot me!” but later admitted he was trying to mislead police.
  • The real suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was arrested Thursday night and identified publicly Friday morning.
  • Zinn was charged with obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony, while Robinson faces charges as the alleged assassin.

Diving Deeper:

Charlie Kirk, one of the most prominent young leaders in the conservative movement, was assassinated in a brazen political attack that shocked supporters nationwide. Instead of immediately capturing the real suspect, police initially detained George Zinn, a man with a long history of causing disruptions at political events and protests.

Video of Zinn being handcuffed quickly spread, leading many to believe the threat had been neutralized. But Zinn’s arrest was a diversion — one that he admitted to orchestrating in order to shield the real shooter. He told police he wanted to “draw attention from the real shooter,” an action that delayed accountability and nearly allowed a dangerous criminal to evade justice longer.

Zinn’s background only adds to the picture. As the Salt Lake Tribune noted, he has a history of disrupting events — from political speeches to cultural gatherings like the Sundance Film Festival. His disruptive activism fits a pattern of left-wing agitators who thrive on chaos, and in this case, he played a role in protecting an assassin.

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Duane Rolheiser

Unite the Kingdom Rally: demonstrators take to the streets in historical numbers to demand end to mass migration in the UK

Published on September 16, 2025

By

If you haven’t been following the emergence of controversial UK journalist Tommy Robinson, you should try not to skip ahead to the aerial shot of what is likely the largest rally in modern UK history.

To even begin to understand the scope of the passion and to comprehend the numbers of English people who attended the “Unite the Kingdom Rally” in London on Saturday, some background information will be very helpful.

Like many western nations, Britain has seen an historical influx of immigrants.  With millions of new immigrants competing for housing, medical care, and government resources, very serious issues are bound to arise.  It makes you wonder how a government could or why a government would allow this to happen.

The following video shows very well what has taken place in terms of how many people have arrived in recent years, and who they are.

As the presenter showed, most of these migrants are from non European Union nations.  Many are from Muslim nations.  That means even in a highly multi-cultural nation like the UK, towns and cities are facing the cultural challenges of suddenly hosting a significant minority of young Muslim men.

Enter the most controversial political figure in Britain, Tommy Robinson.  Robinson’s hometown of Luton, Bedfordshire, England, was one of the first communities in the UK to see a significant percentage of Muslim population.  According to Robinson he noticed his childhood schoolyard and lunchrooms were divided into two separate groups, the traditional English (white Europeans, people from India, and the Caribbean, etc) and the Muslims.

As he got older Robinson claims he started to see a number of young girls being ‘recruited’ by older Muslim men into the drug culture, and becoming sexual partners for multiple Muslim men, including prominent members of the community.  When Robinson started to speak out publicly he was hit with a wall of official denials.  He would go on to challenge the authorities for years, becoming a citizen journalist and eventually an enemy of the state. If you watch his documentary series called The Rape of Britain you will understand just what he’s been claiming for about 15 years.

Fast forward to September of 2025.  The streets of many cities in the UK resemble Robinson’s hometown of Luton.  Robinson’s followers have multiplied from hundreds to thousands, to potentially millions.  The situation has caught the attention of President Donald Trump and X owner Elon Musk. On the weekend, untold thousands of Britons took to the streets of London for Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom March”, a massive rally for free speech and British identity.

Without watching Robinson’s documentaries and journalism it can be difficult to understand the passion of his presentation from Saturday.  The growing thousands and millions in the UK understand.  Those who do not are very likely swayed by the media and government establishment who are trying desperately and less successfully by the day to brand Robinson as a Far Right racist.

Tommy Robinson appeared to be losing the battle for public opinion until Elon Musk stepped in.  Robinson was in jail last January when Musk took note and used his incredible social media reach to bring Robinson’s struggle to a much wider audience.

The owner of the X platform addressed the crowd via video link. In the days following the public execution of Charlie Kirk, Musk condemned the left as “the party of murder” and accused Britain’s political establishment of weaponizing mass migration to reshape the electorate.

 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer was quick to denounce the march while Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the vast majority of demonstrators are “good, ordinary decent people” voicing legitimate concerns about mass migration and the safety of British streets.  At least 25 arrests were made Saturday and police say four police officers were seriously injured.

As for Tommy Robinson, he likely over achieved any expectations he had for this rally and now both he and the UK authorities are planning their next moves.

 

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