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Case 1:16-cv-00540-AJT-MSN Document 37 Filed 07/28/17 Page 5 of 20 PageID# 3261 request being granted in July 2015. Id. ¶ 21e. Also in July 2015, Davison attended a PTA meeting where Principal Stephens ended a discussion about scores from standardized tests and advised Davison that they would not be discussed as they were not part of the agenda. Id. ¶ 30a. Over the spring and summer of 2015, Defendants William Fox, Deborah Rose (“Rose”), Jill Turgeon, and Kevin Kuesters, all LCSB members or members-elect at the time, all blocked Davison from posting any comments or questions on their respective LCSB Facebook pages. Id. ¶ 30f. Defendant Morse, who was campaigning for the upcoming LCSB election at the time, also blocked Davison from his LCSB campaign Facebook page. Id. In August 2015, two months prior to the LCSB election, LCPS officials deleted Davison’s comments that were critical of them from LCPS’s own Facebook page multiple times as Davison continued to repost them. Id. ¶ 30h. Loudoun County Public Schools then stopped accepting any comments from the general public on its page for the entire duration of the 2015 election cycle. Then, at the September 22, 2015 PTA meeting, Davison raised a question regarding student privacy, and Principal Stephens told him that she would return to his question. Fifteen minutes later, Davison started to leave the PTA meeting, and Principal Stephens began to address him as he was leaving. Davison apologized for having to leave early but voiced his concern for student privacy related to the standardized test policy. Principal Stephens attempted to interrupt Davison, but Davison spoke over her as he left the meeting. Principal Stephens chased after him as he was leaving the school cafeteria and reprimanded him for asking the question and threatened to ban him from the school. Davison responded that he would protect his rights in federal court. Id. ¶ 30w-y. Following that event, the LCSB held a closed meeting that same evening to discuss Davison’s “threat to public safety,” and Principal Stephens issued a letter to Davison dated 5

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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: 28 de jul. de 2017

Case Status: Closed

Case Outcome (Procedural)

Dismissed

Case Outcome (Disposition)

Blocking or Filtering of Information

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 Name and URL: Columbia Global Freedom of Expression

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Davison v Rose.pdf
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CYRILLA: Global Digital Rights Law

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Davison v. Rose

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