Former President Donald Trump’s frequent use of Twitter lurked in the background as the justices weighed whether an official’s online activities can constitute government action.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that members of the public in some circumstances can sue public officials for blocking them on social media platforms, deciding a pair of cases against the backdrop of former President Donald Trump’s contentious and colorful use of Twitter.

The court ruled unanimously that officials can be deemed “state actors” when making use of social media and can therefore face litigation if they block or mute a member of the public.

In the two cases before the justices, they ruled that disputes involving a school board member in Southern California and a city manager in Michigan should be sent back to lower courts for the new legal test to be applied.

  • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’m surprised that our right wing Supreme Court would rule this way. What am I missing? Because they have not lately been ruling in good faith.

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      There is no long term plan with conservative/authoritarians. They live in a world where arbitrary rules are fine and justice applies to all (others).

      • ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The long term plan of conservatives is to accumulate privilege and shed limitations. That’s the only end game they care about and as long as that is the status quo they are happy as pigs in shit.

    • juicy@lemmy.today
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      5 months ago

      Free speach is not a left or right issue anymore. The left is anti-free-speach as often as the right is. The left is happy to silence speech it doesn’t like when it’s online or on campus. The right is happy to silence it when it’s a library book or story time.

      I hope leftists wake up as they watch anti-Zionist speech get silenced by the mechanisms they used to use against the right. The answer to bad speech, whether hate speech or misinformation, is more speech.

      • ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        This is laughably incorrect. The left are so tolerant of harmful speech by their political opponents it’s neutered their own ability to sell themselves as competitively viable when they do clash with fascists in the political arena. The most lefty space I know bends over backwards to accommodate genocidal retards in the name of pacifying the right and it’s because they believe people who say things like this.

        Fuck Israel, free Palestine

      • baru@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Free speach is not a left or right issue anymore.

        Ah, there’s the usual “both sides” “argument”.

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Don’t conflate the conservative Supreme Court’s philosophy with the MAGA GOP’s philosophy. The two align a lot, but they are very much not the same thing.