The Court has interpreted the “freedom of speech” protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution to guarantee the public’s access to “public forums,” where speeches and other expressions of opinion can be freely given, without political censorship by the government. Under that “public forum” doctrine, several interactive social-media pages maintained by governmental officials have been labeled “public forums” by the courts, and the officials’ efforts to restrain
public commentary on those pages have been held to be violations of the
commentators’ First Amendment rights.
In Lindke v. Freed, decided on March 15, 2024, the high Court ruled that an official’s censorship of public commentary on his or her own social-media web page will violate a commentator’s First Amendment rights, when, but only when the official has actual authority to speak on the government’s behalf on a particular matter, and claims to do so when he or she posts something on his or her social-media page about that particular matter. Only then, the Court appeared to reason, does the official turn his or her private web page into a “public forum” subject to the people’s First Amendment rights. The Court’s decision was unanimous.
COMMENT: The Court’s longstanding “public forum” doctrine has no basis in the actual text of the United States Constitution. The doctrine should be overruled in its entirety—otherwise we have a judicial branch of government amending the Constitution, instead of interpreting it. Nevertheless, the Court’s ruling in Lindke at least serves the
purpose of limiting the application of that doctrine.
Dan Rhea
RECENT RULINGS 