Although the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that States cannot restrict a registered sex offender’s access to social media (Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. ___ (2017)), nothing has stopped social media companies, such as Facebook or Twitter, from restricting sex offenders from their platforms. A lawsuit filed last week may change that!
Jared Taylor is the founder of the Virginia-based New Century Foundation – a white supremacist organization that was banned from Twitter because of new rules aimed at reducing abusive content. Although we don’t agree with the viewpoints of the Plaintiff, this lawsuit is certainly one in which we hope the Plaintiff prevails.
Taylor is suing California-based Twitter in California Superior Court, alleging that Twitter’s policy of banning him and his organization from their social media platform is unconstitutional and violates Twitter’s own founding principle; to ““[g]ive everyone the power to create and share ideas instantly, without barriers.”
This should be an interesting case, if it makes it to trial. On one hand you have a private person, Twitter, who has the same rights as any other person. As such, Twitter can exercise its Free Speech and exclude speech as it wishes. However, that comes crashing against what SCOTUS said in Packingham. There are definitely some huge constitutional consequences of this case, regardless the outcome. I just don’t see how a court gets around the statement that social media are the modern public square. The dissent in Packingham didn’t like that broad stroke…this case may highlight why. This case *will* get appealed all the way to SCOTUS…in a few years.
Why not sue facebook?
PragerU vs YouTube is another case similiar
FYI Twitter does not ban rc’s. In fact, Facebook is the only one who regularly does. I know a court ruling against twitter or youtube would have a global effect on social media, but the article is wrong in saying twitter bans rc’s
I agree with the corporations banning who they want to ban. It’s their right to conduct business in the best interest of the company and to protect its clients, image, and sponsors.
I hope they lose the case.
What I don’t agree with is the government giving us a label of being dangerous without due process, and instead applying that label to a wide range. They are incorrectly shifting the burden to everyone else, and every company, to either figure out if people on “the list” are truly a threat, and since that is not feasible, people and companies err on the side of caution and just ban us. Same with IML and notifying countries. That shifts the burden, and that burden won’t be accepted.
Why label someone as dangerous, or even potentially dangerous, and try to force everyone else in the world to figure out if you are over and over again, instead of actually determining that one time, as a fair part of a trial?
@CR:
First, a correction to my statement above about recalling the case you cited: I was thinking it was the case involving the people who hand out escort flyers. What you have provided is something else…and having read it, it does indeed seem to have some strong arguments against FB or its ilk from being able to claim private forum status. The case itself was so so, but the case law they cited was awesome! I particularly like this snippet:
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Although the owner of the property retains title, by dedicating the property to public use, the owner has given over to the State or to the public generally “one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property,” the right to exclude others.
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This would seem to apply to social media, FB in particular. They have dedicated their property (FB website) to public use: political leaders of all stripes, at every level of government, in every branch of government are using it. Cities, counties and states use it. Charities use it. Schools use it. I believe by their ubiquity, they have ceded their right to exclude others.
I also like this citation:
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In Citizens to End Animal Suffering, the district court enjoined the owners of Faneuil Hall Marketplace, a private corporation, from interfering with the plaintiffs’ freedom of expression, because the Hall was performing a public function.
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How is this any different than what FB does?
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I have long been strident in my position that FB cannot be compelled to allow RCs on its site. This case shifts my position.
Thanks, CR, for this excellent find! I don’t know that I’ll be suing FB anytime soon (I’ve never been fond of social media), but I’ll keep it in my “law library.” 🙂
P.S. Yes, that Yale paper on Romer v. Evans is pretty good reading. I wondered, too, how J. Kennedy could be so wise in that case, yet be off the rails in Smith. He seems to have found his path again, but boy are we still suffering for it!
Twitter doesn’t ban sex offenders. Only Facebook and Instagram ban sex offenders. Kind of dumb if you ask me, given that (as someone else mentioned “Russian Meddling” above) Facebook had no problem screwing up the 2016 elections. Yet when it comes to RSO’s, who are actual CITIZENS who have paid with with some form of incarceration or supervision, Facebook manages to put the interests of treasonists and foreign agents over actual citizens. As far as I’m concerned, Facebook is just a waste of time. Some of us ought to see the ban as a blessing in disguise.
A lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court against Pres. Trump and his blocking of people on Twitter may be the canary in the coal mine regarding social media being public fora. If Twitter is declared a public forum, there will be little stopping any and every other platform routinely and systematically used by public officials being declared a public forum (are you listening, FB?).
(https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/08/a-federal-judge-is-skeptical-about-whether-trump-can-block-twitter-users.html)