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| Courtesy of Ron Niebrugge |
If you don’t like them, ignore them, that’s the advise your mother gave you as a kid. How that translates into social media when you are an elected public figure has yet to be determined.
After the ruckus caused by Trump’s Twitter-gate, Representative Scott Kawasaki (D D-1) asked the Alaska Legislature’s Division of Legal and Research Services to weigh in on a legislator’s right to block users or suppress comments on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
Several members of the Alaska State Legislature have admitted to being either social media blockers or deleters, like Anchorage attorney Les Gara who represents the Spenard area.
Representative Scott Kawasaki (D D-1): “Les Gara actually blocks like the oil industry folks, and they get pissed off at him. So it was sort of a thing,”
Representative Gara says, not my thing.
Representative Les Gara (D D-20); “There are a couple of campaign operatives, ….they are just there to spend money against you and spin what you have to say. … It’s very few people. It is a small handful.”
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| Scott Kawasaki |
In 2011, Legislative council adopted social media guidelines, but they didn’t address blocking users or suppressing comments, and if it makes a difference if the activity is happening on their personal page or their official public figure page. The differences between a designated public forum and a limited public forum have become increasingly unclear when paired with the many nuances of the internet.
Representative Scott Kawasaki (D D-1): “It is really fascinating, ’cause you wouldn’t think that it should be a problem, but then the memo seems to say, well is it common property? Are you therefor supposed to allow access to anybody no matter what – that kind of thing – or is it free speech, and you can curb free speech.”
In a brief responding to Kawasaki’s question, Leg Legal found that according to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a limited public forum is a sub-category of a designated public forum that refers to a type of nonpublic forum that the government has intentionally opened to certain groups, and that the U.S Supreme Court has recognized that there is “no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to the internet,” noting that the basic principles of freedom of speech do not change when applied to a new medium, such as social media.
Whether a public official’s use of a social media account creates a designated or limited public forum is unsettled. There is no case law governing this issue in Alaska, so the question has yet to come before a judge or jury.
Story as aired on KSRM News:
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