Supreme Court to Decide Whether Elected Officials Can Be Sued for Blocking Critics on Social Media

The Supreme Court has agreed to take up two cases involving public officials who have blocked their critics on social media. The cases will determine whether elected officials can be sued by users who have lost the ability to interact with those accounts.

The issue of public officials blocking followers who criticize them on Facebook and Twitter has been at the center of a lawsuit brought against former President Donald Trump in 2017. The Supreme Court has now taken up two separate cases involving two members of the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees in southern California and the city manager of Port Huron, Michigan.

The cases will address a legal question left unresolved in a previous case involving former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account. The Supreme Court had ordered the case to be thrown out in April 2021, after Trump left office and the case was moot.

The Supreme Court will now decide whether elected officials can be sued for blocking users who criticize them on social media. The court’s decision could have a major impact on how elected officials use social media to interact with voters. It could also set a precedent for how public officials use social media to engage with their constituents.