A US Federal Appeals Court has ruled unanimously that Facebook is a public forum and that any public officials blocking citizens on this platform were violating the First Amendment right to freedom of expression.

Keep your hands off that “block” button, an appeals court told a government bureaucrat who temporarily blocked a constituent who’d posted criticism on one of her Facebook Pages. Blocking is unconstitutional, the court declared, given that aspects of the page in question “bear the hallmarks of a public forum.”

The ruling was handed down on Monday by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and could serve as a precedent, given that it’s the first decision from an appellate court that addresses the applicability of the First Amendment to social media accounts run by public officials.

“You cannot ban speech you don’t like from social media accounts you use to invite constituents to discuss government business,” Como said in an interview. “If that’s what you’re doing, this is sending a very strong message that public officials need to act quickly to educate themselves on this ruling.”

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