Supreme Court Rules Public Officials CANNOT Block Users On Social Media

The Supreme Court handed down a ruling last week in a pair of cases dealing with public officials blocking users on social media. According to the ruling, public officials can NOT block users if they use the account for official announcements. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The Supreme Court handed down a ruling last week in a pair of cases dealing with public officials blocking users on social media. According to the ruling, public officials cannot block users if they use the account for official announcements. What's your take?

I think this is actually surprisingly a pretty good ruling from the Supreme Court. And like you said, you had these two separate cases and it involved small time local officials. One out in California, one up in Michigan, and they just kind of combined the cases. But these officials were getting real bad with their own constituents calling them out on Facebook and Twitter. So they just said, well, I'm gonna block you, even though what I'm doing is I'm using my account for official business, doing the proclamations, putting out important community information. I'm blocking you because you're just annoying me at this point. And so the constituents filed suit, they said, well, listen, I know, yes, I'm you off, but I have to have access to this information. You're violating my constitutional rights. And the court overwhelmingly said, yeah, you can't do that.

It was a clear, look, why would it even get to the Supreme Court? Right? I mean, why would it even get there? It's a clear First Amendment issue. It's the idea of a politician being able to say, there's some things you can't say to me. A, I didn't do my job right. B, something I'm doing is irregular, maybe illegal. You can't do that. It's a new policy in America. That's where this was going because they were using this all over the country in little everything from, as you point out, city commissioners, county commissioners, councils,

School boards, everything.

School boards. Well, we don't like the fact that you called us idiots for some stupid move we make. So rather than fixing the problem, you're just gonna go away. Right.

Right. And what's so funny about this to me is that here in the state of Florida, we're kind of trying to go the opposite way. We are trying to go the path where if you call a politician in this state, an idiot, they can now sue you for defamation. So they're doing the absolute opposite on free speech here in Florida versus the Supreme Court. And what's great about this too is, I love this, is that you actually had legal scholars on the left and on the right.

Saying how bad it.

That both said, this is a good decision. Thank you for finally.

Saying how bad the idea is of blocking out constituents.

Right. And the ACLU said, this is great. And this is what we need to have. And I will say the court made a distinction. They said, listen, obviously if you're a public official, you haven't always been a public official. So if you have your private Facebook or your private Twitter, and you're using that just as a regular user, sure, block everybody you want. That's your right. But if you're using it either as your official account or you create an official account, you have to leave it open for everybody. And if you don't wanna have these people getting mad at you, maybe be a better politician.

You know, in Florida, and its not just Florida that's trying to turn New York Times v Sullivan on its head. That's what they're trying to do. The law is very clear. If you're a public official, you have stepped into a position where people can be extremely critical of you. It has to be malicious intent. That's how bad it has to be. Something even more than that sometimes. So they're never gonna change that.