The Supreme Court weighed Tuesday whether public officials can block certain people from their social media accounts, invoking hypothetical arguments on high-profile figures from former President Donald Trump to Taylor Swift.
The justices heard arguments in a pair of cases involving suits filed by people who were blocked after leaving critical comments on social media accounts belonging to school board members in Southern California and a city manager in Port Huron, Michigan. Key to the high court's eventual answer is whether those blocks amounted to a "state action."
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Arguments on Tuesday marked the first of three days this term in which the justices will ensnare themselves in the complexities surrounding the ever-growing relationship between online discourse and politics. "More and more of our democracy operates on social media,” Justice Elena Kagan said during three hours of arguments.
Justice Clarence Thomas addressed the "looming elephant in the room" over the power of social media platforms to remove accounts. The high court will hear arguments early next year on Republican-backed laws in Florida and Texas that block social media giants from removing posts over users' expressed viewpoints. It will also hear a challenge from Missouri and Louisiana to the Biden administration's bid to counter social media posts on matters including COVID-19 and election security.
But Tuesday's cases dealt with a matter similar to a lawsuit filed against Trump after his decision to block critics from his personal account on Twitter, now X. The justices dismissed the case once Trump left office.
Kagan pointed out that anyone who was aware of Trump's work during his four-year presidency would likely be informed by his posts on his online profile.
"I mean, sometimes he was announcing policies," Kagan said. "Even when he wasn’t, I mean, I don’t think a citizen would be able to really understand the Trump presidency, if you will, without any access to all the things that the president said on that account."
The Biden administration backs the officials involved in the case, and Justice Department attorneys took a similar stance as the Trump administration did over Trump's Twitter account.
The justices posed other hypothetical arguments to compare what restricting access to a social media page was most similar to in real life. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has previously touted her prowess for Taylor Swift lyrics, used the pop star as an example for one of her own arguments.
"What if we have a big concert, Taylor Swift has a big concert in a private ... park or something, and the police recognize there are going to be large crowds, etc., and so they come and they help with the screening of the bags and they kick out people who are rowdy and they are controlling access to this area of the private area of this. Because it's private, we would say that's not state action?" Jackson asked.
Masha G. Hansford, assistant to the solicitor general, responded that state officials "can exclude" people from private property, answering, "I think those officers would be carrying out their official duties."
Gary Lawkowski, a lawyer with Dhillon Law Group, told the Washington Examiner that Tuesday's oral arguments reflect "the complexity and nuances that arise when drawing lines between what is personal and when someone is acting as a government official."
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"Several justices seem interested in having a clearer legal standard, but the devil will be in the details of how the court ultimately writes its opinion and what the consequences are going forward for public officials on social media," Lawkowski added.
A decision by the justices is expected by the end of June next year.