PHOENIX — The American Civil Liberties Union has dropped its lawsuit against U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, saying it has assurances constituents won’t be blocked from posting comments he doesn’t like on his Facebook page.
Attorney Darrell Hill acknowledged Friday that Gosar had changed his policies about how the page will operate before the ACLU filed suit in April on behalf of J’aime Morgaine of Kingman and Paul Hamilton of Prescott.
But Hill said the policy change, by itself, did not guarantee future open access, something he now says the Arizona Republican congressman, through his chief of staff, has now provided.
Still, Hill said his organization intends to monitor how the web page is run to ensure that the First Amendment rights of constituents are not violated. And if there are problems, he said, there will be another lawsuit.
What changed, Hill said, is a declaration filed with the court by Thomas Van Flein, Gosar’s chief of staff.
“They’re not going to hide or delete comments based on viewpoints,” Hill said. “They’re not going to block users based on isolated violations of the policy.”
Most significant is what Hill says is an acknowledgment that the Facebook page is a public forum.
Van Flein’s declaration does not actually say that. But it does say the staffers responsible for managing the page “have been instructed that in implementing this policy they must do so in a viewpoint-neutral, non-discriminatory manner.”
It also spells out that users may be blocked only for repeated violations, “and only for a limited period of time.”
Friday’s dismissal means there will be no ruling in this case of whether a public official’s Facebook page is a public forum, a designation that limits the ability of the host to decide who can and cannot participate.
In May, a federal judge declared that President Trump’s Twitter account is a “public platform” subject to First Amendment protections, barring the president from blocking people from posting to that account.
