SCOTUS: LINKE V. FREED Y LAS LIMITACIONES DE LOS FUNCIONARIOS QUE USAN PLATAFORMAS DIGITALES (I) https://t.co/H7TV2OHDDh
— Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero (@ruiz_zapatero) March 20, 2024
Los #funcionarios públicos que usan plataformas digitales en su condición de autoridad no pueden #bloquear a sus #críticos#tribunalsupremo#EstadosUnidos
The Supreme Court on Friday (15-03-2024) ruled that public officials who post about topics relating to their work on their personal social media accounts are acting on behalf of the government, and therefore can be held liable for violating the First Amendment when they block their critics, only when they have the power to speak on behalf of the state and are actually exercising that power.
Held: A public official who prevents someone from commenting on the official’s social-media page engages in state action under §1983 only if the official both (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf on a particular matter, and (2) purported to exercise that au- thority when speaking in the relevant social-media posts. Pp. 5–15.
(a) Section 1983 provides a cause of action against “[e]very person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or us- age, of any State” deprives someone of a federal constitutional or stat-utory right. (Emphasis added.) Section 1983’s “under color of” text makes clear that it is a provision designed as a protection against acts attributable to a State, not those of a private person. In the run-of- the-mill case, state action is easy to spot. Courts do not ordinarily pause to consider whether §1983 applies to the actions of police offic- ers, public schools, or prison officials. Sometimes, however, the line between private conduct and state action is difficult to draw.
In Griffin v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 130, for example, it was the source of the power,
not the identity of the employer, which controlled in the case of a dep-
utized sheriff who was held to have engaged in state action while em-
ployed by a privately owned amusement park. Since Griffin, most
state-action precedents have grappled with whether a nominally pri-
vate person engaged in state action, but this case requires analyzing
whether a state official engaged in state action or functioned as a pri-
vate citizen.
Freed’s status as a state employee is not determinative. The distinc-
tion between private conduct and state action turns on substance, not
labels: Private parties can act with the authority of the State, and state
officials have private lives and their own constitutional rights—includ-
ing the First Amendment right to speak about their jobs and exercise
editorial control over speech and speakers on their personal platforms.
Here, if Freed acted in his private capacity when he blocked Lindke
and deleted his comments, he did not violate Lindke’s First Amend-
ment rights—instead, he exercised his own. Pp. 5–8.
(b) In the case of a public official using social media, a close look is definitely necessary to categorize conduct. In cases analogous to this one, precedent articulates principles to distinguish between personal
and official communication in the social-media context. A public offi- cial’s social-media activity constitutes state action under §1983 only if the official (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s be- half, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when he spoke on social media. The appearance and function of the social-media activity are relevant at the second step, but they cannot make up for a lack of state authority at the first. Pp. 8–15.
(1) The test’s first prong is grounded in the bedrock requirement
that “the conduct allegedly causing the deprivation of a federal right
be fairly attributable to the State.” Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457
U. S. 922, 937 (emphasis added). Lindke’s focus on appearance skips
over this critical step. Unless Freed was “possessed of state authority”
to post city updates and register citizen concerns, Griffin, 378 U. S., at
135, his conduct is not attributable to the State. Importantly, Lindke
must show more than that Freed had some authority to communicate
with residents on behalf of Port Huron. The alleged censorship must
be connected to speech on a matter within Freed’s bailiwick. There
must be a tie between the official’s authority and “the gravamen of the
plaintiff’s complaint.” Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U. S. 991, 1003.
To misuse power, one must possess it in the first place, and §1983
lists the potential sources: “statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or
usage.” Determining the scope of an official’s power requires careful
attention to the relevant source of that power and what authority it
reasonably encompasses. The threshold inquiry to establish state ac-
tion is not whether making official announcements could fit within a
job description but whether making such announcements is actually
part of the job that the State entrusted the official to do. Pp. 9–12.
(2) For social-media activity to constitute state action, an official must not only have state authority, he must also purport to use it. If the official does not speak in furtherance of his official responsibilities,
he speaks with his own voice. Here, if Freed’s account had carried a label—e.g., “this is the personal page of James R. Freed”—he would be entitled to a heavy presumption that all of his posts were personal, but Freed’s page was not designated either “personal” or “official.” The ambiguity surrounding Freed’s page requires a fact-specific undertak- ing in which posts’ content and function are the most important con- siderations. A post that expressly invokes state authority to make an announcement not available elsewhere is official, while a post that merely repeats or shares otherwise available information is more likely personal. Lest any official lose the right to speak about public affairs in his personal capacity, the plaintiff must show that the official purports to exercise state authority in specific posts. The nature of the social-media technology matters to this analysis. For example, be- cause Facebook’s blocking tool operates on a page-wide basis, a court would have to consider whether Freed had engaged in state action with respect to any post on which Lindke wished to comment. Pp. 12–15.
37 F. 4th 1199, vacated and remanded.
BARRETT , J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court
No comments:
Post a Comment