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Comment by JasonFruit | Hacker News Reader

Wait, any public official? So the elected school board members in my town can't block me on Twitter if I go on crazy racist tirades, as long as they're political in nature? How about the dogcatcher? He can't block PETA animal rights screed accounts? And doesn't being forced to let cranks interact with prominent accounts increase those cranks' visibility? Is that forcing the prominent person to promote speech with which they disagree?

I think there's a lot of nuance this opinion doesn't address.

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We have a very broad "right to petition" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition) our representatives and executives. Yes, the school board must listen to your crazy rants, because it's literally their job to represent you, or at least to be aware that your views exist.

Your school board doesn't have to listen. They can put headphones on and hum loudly through your speech if they like. They just can't prevent you from talking to them.

Equivalently, the judge seems to have concluded that the President muting someone on Twitter is fine, but blocking them is not.

Well, Teump can't block someone because it's been defined his Twitter account is official policy of the President. The same would be true for any government official who's account is defined as such.

If it were a personal account, with personal views being posted, blocking would be fine. You could probably even make your account private and only allow approved followers. But, that's not the case here.

> Wait, any public official? So the elected school board members in my town can't block me on Twitter if I go on crazy racist tirades, as long as they're political in nature?

Application of the same rule applief here to local officials actually preceded this decision.

> I think there's a lot of nuance this opinion doesn't address.

Trial court decisions are not legislation—or even appellate decision where there is a need except in unusual circumstances to articulate a reusable rule. They tend to apply law narrowly to the facts of the case in front of them, not address nuance involving hypothetical circumstances not at issue.

No. The public official can still mute them so they don't see they. The public official doesn't have to interact. But they cannot keep someone from accessing their feed when they use it for politics. They still have the right to access the information directly.

These same people can right letters, after all. The politician doesn't have to read these letters nor respond to them. But in doing so, they can't keep people from sending letters nor stop them from getting information about the office.

In short: When they use their tech for political motives, the politician's want to block people doesn't overturn the people's right to get information from the source, be it twitter or a press release on the government's website.

Public officials who have accounts considered “public forums” which are open to strongest first amendment protections.

Maybe this will lead to the end of twitter use by public officials :)

I'm not sure about the school board; having to consider (or at least read) all public feedback doesn't extend far "below" governor AFAIK.

> can't block me on Twitter if I go on crazy racist tirades

If they did have to read it (again, not sure), they wouldn't be forced to retweet it. So some poor soul would have to read that vitriol but you wouldn't be defacing their profile.

They could create there own webpage capable of displaying hundreds of bytes worth of text and post messages there to get around this, right?

Are dog catchers public officials? Here they are contracted by the city. That's a pretty big difference.

It depends on the local government structure. I've lived in places where the "head dog catcher" was indeed an elected post.

In other places it is an appointment by the local board of commissioners or mayor, making it a public position. In still others, like your example, it's a contract position the local government bids on like any other contractor.

You should try attending a city council session sometime. You'd be amazed at what council members put up with.

I have. Oy.

IANAL... would this apply to government officials who maintain a private account and use a government account for work? In Trump's case (and Haley, and many others), he uses his personal account for business. And the President could be an edge case, and simply unable to separate private and business messages. The local dog catcher should be able to maintain that separation.

No, it would not apply to a private account not used for official government business.

I think there’s a separate argument as to whether the President can actually separate public and private statements, not that Trump has made any attempt to do so - he has been clear that his posts on his personal feed represent official statements from his office.

> this opinion

do you mean techcrunch article's opinion or the judicial opinion?

The judicial opinion, from the excerpts I found, didn't look inclined to address any of these questions.

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