In what can only be described as the world’s most high-stakes case of left-on-read, the U.S. Supreme Court is spending a surprisingly thoughtful amount of time deciding whether public officials can block you on social media simply because you called them names or pointed out that their latest city ordinance reads like it was written by a sleep-deprived intern. The issue stems from cases involving local officials who perhaps took the phrase “community engagement” a little too personally and decided that blocking constituents on Facebook and Twitter was a perfectly reasonable way to avoid people with inconvenient opinions and a fondness for memes.
At the center of the legal tug-of-war are two cases: one from California where two school board members blocked critics on Facebook after what we assume were rather colorful disputes over masks, mandates, and probably gluten-free cafeteria cookies, and another from Michigan where a city manager who posted city business on his Facebook page was decidedly less enthusiastic once the comments lacked emoji support. The justices, being the digital natives they most certainly are not, are now charged with squinting at this strange new frontier where a private citizen’s social media post turns into a public agora the moment they decide to complain about potholes or the lack of pickleball funding.
The legal question, stripped of hashtags and irony, is whether a public official’s social media account is personal or governmental. The former gives the green light to poetic unfriending, the latter requires letting constituents enjoy their constitutional right to be annoying. As Justice Elena Kagan gently poked, if an official uses an account to air city proclamations and official business, it is rather difficult to pretend they are just showing off their lunch. One would imagine the Founding Fathers fully anticipated such complexities while drafting the First Amendment by candlelight and not one among them could have foreseen a scenario where their freedom of speech doctrines would hinge on comment sections filled with gifs and grammar crimes.
“When a government official uses their account to make decisions or post city business, it’s not just idle chatter,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presumably resisting the urge to mute the whole proceeding.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has weighed in, suggesting that while government officials may want to protect themselves from harassment, they cannot selectively silence pesky opinions just because they are inconvenient or include unflattering interpretations of emoji. This, the administration argues, is akin to holding a public town hall and then stuffing one’s ears with cotton any time the audience says something that hurts a few delicate sensibilities.
The implications here are significant, not only for mayors with thin skin and strong Wi-Fi but also for anyone with a passing interest in civic engagement that occurs outside of dusty auditoriums and inside the algorithmic gladiator pit that is social media. The Court’s decision will inevitably dictate whether officials who open their digital doors to the public can then slam them shut when the comments get spicy.
The justices are expected to rule by June which gives public officials just enough time to clean up their timelines and for the rest of us to unearth our most pristine screenshots. Constitutional law, it seems, now partially resides between cat videos and angry replies.
Because nothing says democracy like a court case over the sacred American right to subtweet your mayor.