On March 21, 2024, the New Jersey Appellate Division issued a decision in Zack v. Integra Lifesciences Corp. in which the court upheld the termination of a White woman based on public posts she made on Facebook during the protests of police violence following the murder of George Floyd. After other company employees reported being offended by the posts, Integra’s HR Department conducted an investigation, which included reviewing the plaintiff’s post and comments. The investigation determined that plaintiff, an Integra manager who was already under a Performance Improvement Plan, violated the c ..read more

On March 15, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States issued decisions in Lindke v. Freed and Garnier v. O’Connor-Ratcliff, two cases which involved when public officials can block social media followers and delete their comments. The Lindke v. Freed case involved a City Manager (Freed) who deleted certain Facebook comments and then blocked Lindke, a critic of the city, who made comments on Freed’s Facebook page. Freed operated the Facebook page himself and used it to post “prolifically (and primarily)” about his personal life despite sometimes making posts about his City Manager job. Afte ..read more

On June 27, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Counterman v. Colorado, holding, among other things, that the First Amendment required the criminal conviction of a man found guilty of stalking a woman through Facebook to be vacated. In Counterman, the defendant “sent hundreds of Facebook messages” to a woman he never met and he formed new accounts each time the woman blocked him. The woman believed the messages threatened her and placed her in a regular state of fear, so she reported him to the authorities. Colorado charged the defendant under a stalking statute and used only ..read more

On December 8, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided Antonyuk v. Chiumento, a case which challenged many provisions of New York’s law regulating the public carrying of firearms, the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (“CCIA”), based on the Second Amendment. One challenged provision of the CCIA related to its requirement that an applicant for a concealed-carry license attend an in-person meeting with a licensing officer and disclose, among other things, “a list of all former and current social media accounts from the preceding three years.” Plaintiffs (several ind ..read more

On May 5, 2022, plaintiffs – the States of Missouri and Louisiana as well as various private parties – filed suit against the President and various federal agencies and officials, alleging that popular social media platforms had either blocked plaintiffs’ use of the platforms or “downgraded” their posts regarding certain controversial issues. On July 4, 2022, the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction against various Executive Branch agencies and officials prohibiting them from coercing social media companies to engage in censorship o ..read more

The April 18, 2022 Trending Law Blog post discussed how, in Facebook, Inc. v. State of New Jersey, the New Jersey Appellate Division held that a communications data warrant, rather than a wiretap order, was required for law enforcement officers to obtain “prospective electronically stored information” from Facebook users as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. In a June 29, 2023 decision, however, the Supreme Court of New Jersey unanimously reversed the determination of the Appellate Division. The Supreme Court found that to obtain a search warrant, the State ordinarily has to demonstrat ..read more

Just twelve days after Supreme Court of the United States issued a per curiam decision in Gonzalez v. Google LLC, in which the Court declined to address the application of §230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S. §230(c)(1)  (“§230”) (discussed in the June 2, 2023 Trending Law Blog post) to social media platforms, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in the matter of Jane Does v. Reddit, Inc., a case decided on October 24, 2022 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In Reddit, parents and/or victims sued Reddit, a social media platform, after users of Reddit po ..read more

As reported in prior Trending Law Blog posts, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S. §230(c)(1)  (“§230”), has come under attack by politicians and members of the public who seek to remove the statute’s immunity provision which protects social media platforms when they are sued for re-publishing content on their websites from a third-party. On May 18, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a per curiam decision in Gonzalez v. Google LLC in which the Court declined to address the application of §230 to a case which alleged that Google “was both directly and se ..read more

In Hart v. Facebook Inc., et al., the United States District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a social media influencer’s lawsuit against Facebook and Twitter for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights by flagging his posts and suspending his social media accounts. The influencer also sued President Joe Biden and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in the same action for allegedly colluding with the social media platforms to monitor, flag, suspend and delete his posts. In Hart, the plaintiff alleged that Facebook and Twitter restricted him from posting to his accounts o ..read more

On March 16, 2023, the Appellate Division in New Jersey issued a decision in Davis v. Disability Rights New Jersey, which set forth guidelines for when a litigant’s private social media posts may be subject to discovery by the other party to the action. In Davis, the plaintiff in an employment termination case appealed after the trial court entered an order which compelled “plaintiff to provide copies of her private social media posts, profiles and comments” over a 32 month period which the court described as germane to her lawsuit. The Appellate Division found that the trial judge “appropria ..read more