Previous 3 / 20 Next

Case 1:16-cv-00540-AJT-MSN Document 37 Filed 07/28/17 Page 3 of 20 PageID# 3259 During the commencement of the 2014-15 academic year, Davison learned that LCSB denied receiving Student Growth Percentiles data 2 for the teachers it employed, which in fact it had been receiving. Id. ¶ 12. When Davison requested the information, LCSB claimed that VFOIA did not require it to disseminate the information, in any event. Id. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to obtain and discuss the information, Davison submitted requests to LCSB and the Virginia Board of Education under VFOIA. Id. ¶ 18. Both governmental agencies refused, and Davison then filed a Petition for Writ of Mandamus in Richmond Circuit Court. Ultimately, the Richmond Circuit Court required the agencies to produce the requested documents and pay Davison $35,000. Id. ¶ 19. Upon Davison’s receipt and review of the information, he requested that the Seldens Landing Parent Teacher Association (“PTA”) hold an information night to disseminate the information about the school district to other parents. Id. ¶ 22. Defendant Tracy Stephens (“Stephens” or “Principal Stephens”), the principal of Seldens Landing Elementary School, informed the PTA that the information would reflect badly on the school and regularly prevented Davison from discussing the issue. Id. Davison continued to gather information about LCSB officials and LCPS and to disseminate this information to the public via social media and postings in the comments sections of on online news articles. He also attended numerous PTA meetings, LCSB meetings, and other public meetings where he spoke during open comment sessions about the lack of transparency in local government, the undisclosed conflicts of interests of various LCSB members, the school 2 Plaintiff alleges that federal law requires that local school governing bodies that receive federal education grants subject students to standardize testing and that school districts that receive waivers to the No Child Left Behind Act are required to provide student growth data summarizing teachers’ success in preparing their students for such standardized tests to the teachers and to use that data in evaluating teacher performance. AC ¶ 11. 3

Select target paragraph3

● ● ●

Davison v. Rose

Case Law

Country

United States

Country Location

Latitude: 39.778231903243785

Longitude: -100.8801256788983

Country Location (linked Case Law): United States

Decision Date: Jul 28, 2017

Case Status: Closed

Case Outcome (Procedural)

Dismissed

Case Outcome (Disposition)

Access Restriction/Content Regulation/Information Control

Keywords

Political Expression
Public Officials
Social Media

Judicial Body: First Instance Court

Case Number: 1:16cv0540

Case Summary: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Court dismissed the Plaintiff's claims for violations of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights against the Defendant school board members who had banned the Plaintiff from posting on its official Facebook pages and even went to far as to delete comments that were overly critical of the Defendants. The Court reasoned that the Defendants were entitled to sovereign immunity in their official capacity and qualified immunity in their individual capacity because whether or not Facebook constituted a public forum was not a clearly established right they could have reasonably known about. Whether Facebook, or other social media pages, can be considered a public forum for purposes of the First Amendment is a rapidly emerging area of the law that is currently unsettled. The outcome of these legal issues will be especially important for the newly filed lawsuit against President Donald Trump for blocking Twitter users. This is an issue that has yet to be addressed by most jurisdictions and Virginia breaks new ground with this decision and its contradictory finding in Davison v Loudon County Board of Supervisors. Some jurisdictions have discussed the issue of whether the city's official website can be considered a public forum an have found that it is not. See Putnam Pit, Inc. v. City of Cookeville, Tenn., 221 F.3d 834, 841 (6th Cir.2000). However, a Facebook or Twitter page presents an entirely different issue when these pages are generally created for the purpose of permitting public discourse and the public has the ability to post comments and discussions directly on the page. Historically, a public forum is a place that the government has expressly left open for public discourse. However, it is important to note, “[t]he government does not create a public forum by inaction or by permitting limited discourse, but only by intentionally opening a nontraditional forum for public discourse." Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. & Educ. Fund, 473 U.S. 788, 802 (1984). The government can create two main types of public forums: traditional public forums and limited public forums. A traditional public forum encompasses parks, sidewalks, and streets – property owned by the government that has been held out by the government as a public forum. A limited public forum is a forum that the government provides but limits to specific groups, provided the limitation is both viewpoint neutral and reasonable. An example would be a school room open to only school groups for meetings. The definition of a public forum is malleable, and something that changes as society evolves. This presents increasingly difficult issues with the public forum in internet cases. Does the government create a public forum when it creates a webpage? What requirements have to be met in order for the webpage to be considered a public forum or a limited public forum?

Case Significance: The decision does not establish a binding or persuasive precedent within its jurisdiction.

Source URL: Columbia Global Freedom of Expression

Primary Documents

Davison v Rose.pdf
English
Download View

CYRILLA: Global Digital Rights Law

Select target paragraph3

Davison v. Rose

Primary Documents

Notifications