Ngl, I don’t like this justice but I like the hypothetical legal test of whether posting cat photos is state action:
Suppose, to paraphrase a hypothetical offered by Justice Neil Gorsuch, that an official uses their Facebook account both to post cat pictures and to discuss official business. Now suppose that one of that official’s constituents hates cats, and posts so many nasty responses to the cat-related posts that the official eventually blocks the constituent. Because blocking this constituent will also exclude them from the official’s government-related content, did the government official violate the First Amendment here?
I could go on at some length listing the many difficult questions that various justices raised over the course of the arguments. But the important overarching point here is that these cases are very difficult. And it’s not clear that it is possible to come up with a clear-cut legal test that will easily allow judges to distinguish between state and private action online.
Regarding the second paragraph, are there really no government policies in the U.S. regarding operating separate personal/work accounts if one is going to be communicating work-related info to the public on social media? It seems like that alone would have sufficed to mitigate the headaches of these cases.
To me the answer to this hypothetical is still Yes
It should be required by law that an offical not bar anyone from their offical account and also be required that they only use that account for offical communication. If they wish to have private communication as a private citizen then they need a private account. Simple as that
Even if there are policies it doesn’t really matter. If someone uses a personal account to distribute official information it’s now functionally the official account. A one off mistake probably doesn’t matter, but a repeated pattern would definitely be a problem.
Ngl, I don’t like this justice but I like the hypothetical legal test of whether posting cat photos is state action:
Regarding the second paragraph, are there really no government policies in the U.S. regarding operating separate personal/work accounts if one is going to be communicating work-related info to the public on social media? It seems like that alone would have sufficed to mitigate the headaches of these cases.
To me the answer to this hypothetical is still Yes
It should be required by law that an offical not bar anyone from their offical account and also be required that they only use that account for offical communication. If they wish to have private communication as a private citizen then they need a private account. Simple as that
Even if there are policies it doesn’t really matter. If someone uses a personal account to distribute official information it’s now functionally the official account. A one off mistake probably doesn’t matter, but a repeated pattern would definitely be a problem.