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Civil Action No. 5:20-cv-00069 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA HARRISONBURG DIVISION Scarborough v. Frederick Cnty. Sch. Bd. 517 F. Supp. 3d 569 (W.D. Va. 2021) Decided Feb 8, 2021 Civil Action No. 5:20-cv-00069 2021-02-08 Christie SCARBOROUGH, Plaintiff, v. FREDERICK COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, et al., Defendants. Christie Scarborough, Winchester, VA, pro se. Heather Kathleen Bardot, Bancroft, McGavin, Horvath & Judkins PC, Fairfax, VA, for Defendants. THOMAS T. CULLEN, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE 572 *572 Christie Scarborough, Winchester, VA, pro se. Heather Kathleen Bardot, Bancroft, McGavin, Horvath & Judkins PC, Fairfax, VA, for Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION THOMAS T. CULLEN, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE 573 Pro se Plaintiff Christie Scarborough filed this civil-rights suit against the Frederick County School Board ("FCSB"); Steve Edwards, the head of communications for Frederick County Public Schools ("FCPS"); David Sovine, the Superintendent of FCPS; and James Angelo, the Assistant Superintendent of FCPS (collectively, *573 "Defendants"). The crux of Scarborough's complaint is that Defendants engaged in viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment by (1) deleting her comments criticizing FCPS's COVID-19 protocols and facemask policy from the school system's official Facebook page; (2) blocking her from that Facebook page; and (3) blocking her from the superintendents' official Twitter pages. Scarborough also alleges that in attempting to stifle her online criticism of FCPS's COVID-19 policies, Defendants violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that FCSB is separately liable for failing to train its employees on lawful socialmedia policies. Defendants have filed a Motion to Dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that Scarborough failed to state any viable constitutional claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The motion has been fully briefed, and the court believes that the written arguments of the parties adequately discuss all relevant legal issues such that oral argument would not aid the decisional process.1 Although the court agrees with Defendants that Scarborough has not established a viable equal protection claim or procedural due process claim as to Sovine and Angelo, it disagrees as to the First Amendment claim, procedural due process claim as to FCSB and Edwards, and the failure-to-train claim. Scarborough has sufficiently alleged that the social-media accounts at issue were public forums, and that Defendants engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by deleting her comments and blocking her from these public platforms. Accordingly, the court will grant in part and deny in part Defendants' motion to dismiss. 1

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Scarborough v. Frederick County School Board

Case Law

Country

United States

Country Location

Latitude: 39.778231903243785

Longitude: -100.8801256788983

Country Location (linked Case Law): United States

Decision Date: Feb 8, 2021

Case Status: Closed

Case Outcome (Procedural)

Motion Denied

Keywords

Content Moderation
Digital Rights
Social Media

Judicial Body: First Instance Court

Court Name: United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia

Case Number: 5:20-cv-00069

Case Summary: The United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia denied the Frederick County School Board’s motion to dismiss the claims filed by the petitioner, who was blocked from a school’s official Facebook page and from two superintendents’ official Twitter pages, after criticizing COVID-19 protocols and facemask policies on the aforementioned Facebook page. The plaintiff, Christie Scarborough, filed a civil-rights suit seeking monetary damages. She argued that the defendants engaged in viewpoint discrimination and that her freedom of expression rights under the First Amendment were violated. The defendants responded that the plaintiff failed to allege enough facts to support her claims and that she failed to prove that the accounts were maintained in official capacities. The Court held that Facebook comments were protected by the First Amendment, that the public-forum threshold for a social-media platform was reached because the Facebook page at issue was an arm of the government entity itself, and that viewpoint discrimination was prohibited in all forums. For the Court, the plaintiff’s allegations supported the inference that the defendants blocked the plaintiff from the Facebook page because they did not like what she had said about their policies. As for the Twitter claim, the Court recalled the case Knight First Amend. Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. Trump and considered that the public officials operated their Twitter accounts in their official capacities and that there was enough evidence to consider that the applicant’s removal from the social-media platform was a result of her criticism of their policies. In conclusion, the Court considered that the applicant effectively argued that the social-media accounts at issue were public forums, and that the defendants engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by blocking her from Facebook and Twitter.

Case Significance: This judgment reproaches viewpoint discrimination in the context of social media, discouraging public servants to remove comments or block people from official Facebook or Twitter accounts when their actions are criticized. In this sense, it reaffirms the First Amendment protection over public expressions that address matters of public concern, and it confirms public forum scrutiny over official pages and over “private” accounts operated in an official capacity, as laid out in Knight.

This case did not set a binding or persuasive precedent either within or outside its jurisdiction. The significance of this case is undetermined at this point in time.

Related Caselaw (self)

Source URL: Global Freedom of Expression

Collection

Columbia

Date Updated: Jul 19, 2024

Primary Documents

Decision
English
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CYRILLA: Global Digital Rights Law

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Scarborough v. Frederick County School Board

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