Good news people

Is that real? I can't believe the SCOTUS would rule 9-0 on something like that because it's actually both a hilarious thing to rule on and also extremely based to disallow public officials from blocking people on bird site

https://archive.ph/pYYAD (nbc news link)
not only is it real, it's for the funniest reasons.
- The California case arose after two members of the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees, Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff and T.J. Zane, blocked parents Christopher and Kimberly Garnier from commenting on their Facebook page in 2017. O’Connor-Ratcliff also prevented Christopher Garnier from responding to her Twitter posts. Zane has since left office.
  I really want to know what was the dispute that led to that.
  This is the most I’ve found:
  Christopher and Kimberly Garnier, who have children attending PUSD schools, often criticized the board of trustees. They began posting lengthy and repetitive comments on the Trustees’ social-media posts—for instance, nearly identical comments on 42 separate posts on O’Connor-Ratcliff ’s Facebook page and 226 identical replies within a 10-minute span to every tweet on her Twitter feed. The Trustees initially deleted the Garniers’ comments before blocking them from commenting altogether.
  Which lmao, but it doesn’t say what the comments were about.
  Edit:
  In the years leading up to the dispute at issue in this case, the Garniers were especially vocal critics of the Board, particularly regarding race relations in the District, and alleged financial wrongdoing by then-Superintendent John Collins.
  regarding race relations
  Oh no. Still not specific enough though.

SCOTUS unanimously agrees The People have the right to bully their elected officials.

critical support to unelected officials

gotta find the line that will keep the secret service/FBI from coming to your door but will still give political ghouls' social media interns PTSD

butthole pictures, basically
you are entitled to a dick rating by your local politician
- Sending dick pics to all of my elected officials asking them to rate my hog
- petitioning to recall my local elected official bc they only rated my junk a 2/5
- I love this country, setting up a Twitter account now.
  "I'm from the government and I'm here to rate your cock."
- Crudbump - nsa :cat-vibing:
What about threats that are clearly non actionable? Like dropping a safe onto someone so they're flattened into a perfectly round oversize pancake?
- The problem is that you'd still have to defend that this is non actionable in court, which against a politician? Good luck. "I will de-limb Politician by summoning space aliens with giant laser swords made from Alpha Centauri Moonrocks until Politician dies" wouldn't even be ridiculous enough if the judge and the politician are somehow in cahoots.
Yeah, this basically gonna be beneficial to right wingers while leftists get visits.

: "In poopoopeepee county of Florida, we propose a right-to-bully law to make trans students official punching bags in schools!"

: "Citizens now have a federal right to bully politicians online."

finally, my death threats can be leveled at their intended targets instead of flung pointlessly into the void

@JoeBiden

make it retroactive you cowards

If my wife was rich she'd have a field day with this... she harasses the shit outta local politicians on FB.

Imaging paying $300 a month in residential proxy costs just to bully politicians an industrial scale.

Ja też tak chcę :sadness:

There's a difference between publicly commenting on a post and sending private messages. Does the ruling make a distinction?

Only one way to find out

Can't wait for every unoriginal loser thinking they're super edgy for spamming slurs at public officials trying to get blocked by them.

Time to call some congressmen and women slurs... fucking crackers

In a ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court acknowledged that it "can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private" because of how social media accounts are used.
The court held that conduct on social media can be viewed as a state action when the official in question "possessed actual authority to speak on the state's behalf" and "purported to exercise that authority."
While the officials in both cases have low profiles, the ruling will apply to all public officials who use social media to engage with the public.

Ok so... The outcome of this is likely that it will stop public officials using social media except in an official and professionalised capacity. I suspect that is precisely what they intend anyway. There's probably some people high up who think mixing informal and formal interaction with the public is not good for public figures or institutions as a whole, and they're probably right because it really highlights what totally normal (and often dumb) people they are. Keeping all communications formal, official and with a lofty air of authority promotes a certain degree of reverence for institutions and public offices in the majority of people.

Suing the shit out of them will be funny in the short term but this will strengthen public offices.

you think some kind of professional ethic and sense of self preservation will stop them from being fools online? think again
- I mean sure. But the potential of legal cases will have some effect, not immediately but in the longterm establishing "I can get sued for the way I behave online as a public figure" will have a significant impact on behaviour online of those in office.
  I stress the fact that this will only occur if they do in fact get sued successfully and it becomes well established. If they fail to get it to happen and succeed then it will fail to have impact.
  I think the most important thing to take note of here is that there are some actively pursuing this. They view it as dangerous.
  Imagine if the whole ruling class were identifiable online and you could discern the working class from the top 1% online. Same effect would occur.

This is really good, because it might open the door to additional lawsuits against public officials.

Just as our founding fathers intended

I’m free!!!