Price v. City of N.Y. 31 15 Civ. 5871 (KPF) (S.D.N.Y. Jun. 25, 2018) City, 555 U.S. at 467-68 (upholding a local government's exclusion of a proposed privately funded monument from a public park, and holding that the government's display of a permanent monument in a public park is not a form of expression limited by the Free Speech Clause); see also Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744, 1757 (2017) ("The First Amendment prohibits Congress and other government entities and actors from 'abridging the freedom of speech'; the First Amendment does not say that Congress and other government entities must abridge their own ability to speak freely."); Latino Officers Ass'n, N.Y., Inc. v. City of New York, 196 F.3d 458, 468 (2d Cir. 1999) ("[I]t is well settled that the government may regulate its own expression in ways that would be unconstitutional were a private party the speaker."); United Veterans Mem'l & Patriotic Ass'n of the City of New Rochelle v. City of New Rochelle, 72 F. Supp. 3d 468, 474 (S.D.N.Y. 2014) *31 ("[B]ecause the Free Speech Clause does not restrict government speech, forum analysis does not apply at all when the government is speaking for itself." (citing Pleasant Grove City, 555 U.S. at 480-81)), aff'd, 615 F. App'x 693 (2d Cir. 2015) (summary order)). When determining whether speech should be attributed to the government, rather than to a private party, courts must consider: (i) whether the government has long used the forum to communicate its message, (ii) whether the particular speech at issue is "closely identified in the public mind with the government," and (iii) whether the government maintains direct "control over the messages conveyed" in the forum. Walker v. Div., Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2239, 2248-49 (2015); see also Matal, 137 S. Ct. at 1757-60 (discussing the government speech doctrine and concluding that trademarks are private speech, not government speech); United Veterans Mem'l, 72 F. Supp. 3d at 474 (noting that in Pleasant Grove City, the Supreme Court "did not announce a test for identifying government speech, but it placed considerable emphasis on whether, based on all the circumstances, a reasonable observer would have concluded that the government was the speaker"). 32 In this case, the City Defendants contend that the entirety of the official Twitter feeds — including publicly viewable reply tweets from Plaintiff and other members of the public — constitute government speech, such that they can control their content by blocking replies from others. (Def. Br. 9-12). In support, they argue that Walker — a case in which the Supreme Court upheld Texas's scheme for specialty license plate designs, even though it rejected a *32 design that presented certain messages that the state did not wish to publicly support or adopt — favors its position. The Court is not persuaded. See Matal, 137 S. Ct. at 1758 (characterizing the government speech doctrine as "essential" but "susceptible to dangerous misuse"). And here it will focus, as Judge Buchwald did, on "the 'interactive space' associated with each tweet in which other users may directly interact with the content of the tweets by, for example, replying to, retweeting, or liking the tweet." Trump, 2018 WL 2327290, at *14. None of the factors set forth in Pleasant Grove City or Walker favors the City Defendants' argument for government speech. Most importantly, reasonable observers of the official Twitter accounts would understand that Plaintiff's reply tweets — those that sharply criticized the City's handling of domestic abuse victims and warning other victims of the possible consequences of relying on City agencies for assistance — were not the City's own speech, but were Plaintiff's alone. These messages emanated from Plaintiff's own Twitter account and clearly identified Plaintiff (or at least her Twitter account) as the speaker. The City Defendants cannot credibly suggest that the public would confuse Plaintiff's posts criticizing the City as being the City's own speech. 15

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