Price v. City of N.Y. 33 15 Civ. 5871 (KPF) (S.D.N.Y. Jun. 25, 2018) The other factors likewise counsel against a finding of government speech. The City has not long used Twitter specifically, or social media generally, to convey its messages, as social media websites are relatively recent phenomena. Messages that emanate from Plaintiff's Twitter account cannot be said to be "closely identified in the public mind" with the City. The City does *33 not — and in fact, cannot — exercise direct control over messages from Plaintiff's own Twitter account. Cf. Walker, 135 S. Ct. at 2248-49.13 The Governor of Kentucky. That court held that the governor's social media pages — including critical comments posted by the governor's constituents about matters of public concern, i.e., the governor's right-towork Court declines to follow Morgan. another user's tweet to his account without blocking the other user." (FAC ¶ 89). See also Monroe v. Hopkins, (2017) EWHC @Person nor @Stranger will be able to receive each other's tweets into their respective Timelines or view each other's tweets on each other's Profiles. However, no tweets are deleted by blocking, and all tweets of a Blocked person are still available for everyone else to see as before, including in any search results."), available at https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/ju dgment-monroe-v-hopkins. Because the City lacks the ability to delete any account's tweets other than its own, it cannot credibly claim direct control over the messages posted in reply to its tweets. 14 The Court is aware of Morgan v. Bevin, No. 17 Civ. 60 (GFVT), 2018 WL 1557300 (E.D. Ky. Mar. 30, 2018), a district court opinion that denied a preliminary injunction to two plaintiffs who were blocked from viewing or commenting on the Twitter and Facebook pages for the then-overdue at 3, 6. For the reasons set forth above, this no ability of an account owner to delete they can 'Block' @Stranger, and neither his not subject to the Free Speech Clause. Id. 13 As Plaintiff alleges in the FAC, "[t]here is really [does not] like tweets by @Stranger, and property taxes — were government speech Court therefore concludes that the conduct of Brooks and Obe in blocking Plaintiff from the official Twitter accounts cannot be classified as government speech. It is instead governed by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.14 433 (QB), at Appendix ¶ 24 ("If @Person policies 34 The Court therefore turns to the difficult task of forum analysis. In Davison v. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, No. 16 Civ. 0932 (JCC), 2016 WL 4801617 (E.D. Va. Sept. 14, 2016) — a nonbinding district court case with similar facts to those at issue here — the pro se plaintiff accessed the official Facebook page of the Loudoun County Government and posted a message on the page that was critical of the government's handling of an open-records request. The webpage's manager, an employee of the Loudoun County government, deleted the comment in apparent violation of the county's own *34 Social Media Comments Policy. Plaintiff posted another comment that protested the alleged violation of his free speech rights, and that message was also deleted, as well as two subsequent postings — making all of Plaintiff's postings invisible to the public. See id. at *1-2. The plaintiff sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, for violation of his First Amendment rights. In support of its motion to dismiss, the government conceded that "in adopting a Social Media Comments Policy, the County designated its Facebook page a limited public forum," but nevertheless argued that "because the County reserved the right to moderate comments, the removal of [p]laintiff's comments [did] not implicate the First Amendment." Id. at *6-7 (citations omitted). The district court rejected the defendants' argument, stating that "[o]nce [the government] had opened a limited forum ... the State must respect the lawful boundaries it has itself set," and thus, "[h]aving adopted the Social Media Comments Policy, the County government is bound to abide by its terms." Id. at *7 (citing 16

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