O'CONNOR-RATCLIFF v. GARNIER

Legal Principle at Issue

Does a public official engage in state action subject to the First Amendment by blocking an individual from the official’s personal social media account, which the official uses to communicate about job-related matters with the public?

Action

The judgment of the Ninth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with the Court's opinion in Lindke v. Freed.

Facts/Syllabus

Elected school board members in Poway, California, created social media pages (under their official titles) that they used to inform the public about their positions. However, when constituents began posting repetitive and off-topic responses to their posts, these school board members blocked them. The constituents sued, alleging that the school board officials’ actions violated their First Amendment rights.
 

Importance of Case

In a unanimous opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Court ruled that a public official’s social media activity will be considered state action when an official 1) Has actual authority to speak on the state’s behalf, and 2) purports to exercise that authority when speaking on social media. 

Critically, the Court stressed that “[a]n official cannot insulate government business from scrutiny by conducting it on a personal page.” In other words, whenever you conduct state business as a public official, you are subject to First Amendment restrictions on limiting the speech of American citizens — and you can’t use a personal social media profile as an excuse to silence criticism.

The Court observed that “mixed-use” pages, such as Freed’s, could be either official or personal depending on how they’re used at a given time. To determine when posts become official state action, lower courts should conduct a “fact-specific inquiry,” in which a post’s “content and function are the most important considerations.”