Davison v. Loudoun County Bd. of Supervisors, 1:16CV932 (JCC/IDD), 2017 WL 3158389 (E.D. Va. July 25, 2017). The District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a declaratory judgment holding that an elected official’s Facebook page operated as a forum for speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and that the elected official violated Plaintiff’s right of free speech when the official banned Plaintiff from her Facebook page.
SUMMARY AND FACTUAL BACKGROUND
In Davison v. Loudon County Board of Supervisors, Defendant, Phyllis J. Randall, Chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, temporarily banned the Plaintiff from posting on her “Chair Phyllis J. Randall” Facebook page (“Facebook Page”) because she was offended by his criticism of her “colleagues on the School Board,” whom he had accused unethical behavior.
The Plaintiff sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and alleged, among other things, that the temporary ban from the Facebook Page violated his rights to free speech. After conducting a bench trial, the court agreed with Plaintiff and held that the Facebook Page was a public forum and that the Defendant violated Plaintiff’s First Amendment rights by banning him from that forum for making comments that offended the Defendant.
DISCUSSION
The court first found that the Facebook Page was “governmental” (as opposed to private) in nature, and thus subject to constitutional constraints. While the Defendant personally maintained and owned the Facebook Page and posted on the page through personal devices, the court found that the Facebook Page was governmental in nature because it arose out of public, not personal reasons. In other words, because the Facebook Page was created when the Defendant was elected, it...
