2 free speech cases to watch at the Supreme Court

[Inigoes]

2 cases at the supreme court deal with politicians blocking constituent views on social media under the guide of personal use to conduct government business. The 2 cases heard yesterday are:

O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier (22-324)

Lindke v. Freed (22-611)​

https://www.courthousenews.com/supreme-court-attempts-to-untangle-public-and-private-social-media-use-by-government-officials/

This kind of thing is what Larry Hogan did to 2A people voicing their opinion online during his tenure as Governor.

 

[Tebonski]

Guess we've learned not to count on Roberts, Kegs and Amy Barrett.

 

[Inigoes]

Lindke v. Freed (22-611) opinion released today.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-611_ap6c.pdf

A public official who fails to keep personal posts in a clearly designated personal account therefore exposes himself to greater potential liability.

 

[Inigoes]

O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier (22-324) - Per Curium

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-324_09m1.pdf

 

[Blacksmith101]

Anyone care to give the Cliff notes version in non lawyer speak as to what these cases actually mean to the average person?

 

[MDFF2008]

The Oconnor-Ratcliff case seems to be a pretty clear cut case, I think they will lose after reading Lindke. They had separate personal and public pages and used their public pages to conduct government business, but it seems the Supreme Court doesn't like the way the 9th Circuit came to their ruling so they want them to reconsider in light of the way the Supreme Court ruled in Lindke.

The Lindke case is an interesting read as the guy really blended the line between a personal and public page and the court is talking about how to detangle that and recognize if someone has the authority of the state and if they are using it through their page, which seems much more clear in the Oconnor-Ratcliff case.

I can see governments publishing guidelines either way that elected officials and others who want to maintain private social media will need to do things like put "MDFF2008-Friends Only" or "MDFF2008 Personal Page. See -URL- for Public Page."