School Board Official Censored Constituent by Blocking Access to Their Social Media Account–Garnier v. O’Connor-Ratcliff

May 15, 2025 · by · in Content Regulation

This case involves two PUSD school board members, O’Connor-Ratcliff and Zane, who “used their public Facebook and Twitter pages to post about goings-on at PUSD and their activities as Trustees.” The court summarizes: “In response to the Garniers’ numerous critical and often repetitive comments on the Trustees’ social media pages, the Trustees deleted or hid the Garniers’ comments. Later, the Trustees began blocking the Garniers from interacting on their social media accounts altogether.”

The lower courts held that the school board members censored the Garniers by blocking them, but the other restrictions were covered by qualified immunity. Prior blog posts on the district court and Ninth Circuit rulings.

This case went to the US Supreme Court, which articulated a new legal standard in the parallel case Lindke v. Freed and remanded this case for reconsideration. On remand, the Ninth Circuit holds that O’Connor-Ratcliff’s social media use was state action. Zane is dismissed from the case because he’s no longer a government official, which moots the case against him.

* * *

In Lindke, the Supreme Court held that “a public official’s social-media activity constitutes state action under § 1983 only if the official (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when he spoke on social media.”

The court summarizes its application of those standards:

we hold that O’Connor-Ratcliff acted under color of state law in blocking the Garniers from her social media pages. First, California law and PUSD Board of Education bylaws establish that O’Connor-Ratcliff “possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf.” Second, the appearance and function of O’Connor-Ratcliff’s social media pages confirm that she “purported to exercise that authority when [she] spoke on social media.”

With respect to the authority question, the court explains:

Bylaw 9012 establishes that PUSD Board members are authorized to communicate certain official, sanctioned information and materials authored by the Board or the Superintendent, while Bylaw 9010(a) indicates that O’Connor-Ratcliff, as the Board president, is a person authorized to share information with the community. Many of O’Connor-Ratcliff’s social media posts included “permissible” content under Bylaw 9012, including posts alerting the public to Board meeting times and agenda items. Further, there can be no question that posts concerning official Board activities were within O’Connor-Ratcliff’s “bailiwick” as a member of the Board and Board president. O’Connor-Ratcliff therefore possessed actual authority to speak on behalf of the state.

The school district had a process for designating social media accounts as official government accounts, which O’Connor-Ratcliff did not do. The court responds: “Lindke recognized the possibility that public officials may at times make official announcements on unofficial, and even otherwise exclusively personal, social media accounts.”

As for the account appearance, the court explained:

Although the accounts bore her name rather than that of the PUSD Board or her office, O’Connor-Ratcliff identified herself on both pages as the president of the PUSD Board of Education. That title appeared in the “About” section of O’Connor-Ratcliff’s Facebook page and directly under her name on her Twitter page, making it immediately visible to anyone who visited her Twitter account. On Facebook, O’Connor-Ratcliff also identified herself as a “Government Official” at the top of her “Home” page and provided her official PUSD email address as a means of contact. Further, neither account included a disclaimer that the pages or posts were intended to be personal. In fact, O’Connor-Ratcliff maintained a separate, private Facebook account for engaging with her family and friends in her personal capacity…

Screenshots of O’Connor-Ratcliff’s Facebook and Twitter feeds show them to be almost exclusively dedicated to posts about PUSD schools and Board of Education activities….

O’Connor-Ratcliff used social media to carry out the duties of her office in other posts as well. Consistent with the “permissible electronic communications concerning district business” listed in the bylaws, O’Connor-Ratcliff regularly posted Board meeting dates, times, and agenda packets on both Facebook and Twitter. In other posts, she invited constituents to complete surveys related to district budgetary planning and the superintendent hiring process.

This case is so old that it deals with social media practices from a decade ago. In the modern era, I anticipate that most government officials post a disclaimer in their social media bios, which may be all that’s needed to flip the results of this case.

I also imagine that government agencies have, following the Lindke ruling, made it explicit that government officials don’t have the authority to speak on behalf of the government via social media. This would be form over substance–for example, Trump is still presidenting by social media, even if he would claim that his Truth Social account is a personal account–but an official policy to that effect would end the Lindke inquiry at the first step.

So while this case highlights an act of government censorship, virtually equivalent censorial practices in the future likely will not have any recourse in the post-Lindke world.

Case Citation: Garnier v. O’Connor-Ratcliff, 2025 WL 1387929 (9th Cir. May 14, 2025)

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