The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently affirmed a judgment that the city of St. Louis violated the First Amendment because its now-former President of the Board of Aldermen, Lewis Reed, blocked on his Twitter account someone who posted a hostile tweet. See Felts v. Green, 91 F.4th 938 (8th Cir. 2024). The district court had classified Reed’s account as a designated public forum and the blocking action as a form of viewpoint discrimination. The case did not become moot either when Reed unblocked the poster after she filed her complaint or when Reed resigned. The Eighth Circuit’s substantive holding was that the vast powers of the President of the Board of Aldermen made him the final decisionmaker for the city for Monell liability purposes, even for something like blocking a social-media user.
The case involves an account on the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter. Reed created the account in 2009. According to the district court’s findings, the account was public, which means that it could be accessed by any user who was not blocked by the owner. When a user is blocked from a public account, the user cannot view the account, react to posts (tweets) by liking them, replying, or “retweet”ing them, or participate in comment threads under the account.
