A government official's social media account counts as a state act under the First Amendment only when the official both possesses actual authority to speak for the government on the account and uses that authority to post — the two-part test the Supreme Court announced unanimously in Lindke v. Freed on March 15, 2024. If the account fails either element, the official can block critics and delete comments as a private citizen without violating the Constitution.
USA Daily News 24 is an online publication, not a law firm, and it publishes information, not legal advice. Officials structuring their accounts, and users challenging moderation, should act on advice of counsel applying circuit-specific precedent.
What was the Lindke case about?
James Freed, city manager of Port Huron, Michigan, ran a Facebook page that mixed campaign material, personal updates, and city announcements — including posts about COVID-19 policy that carried his city title in the header. Kevin Lindke commented critically; Freed deleted the comments and blocked him. Lindke sued under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, claiming the deletions were state action. Lower courts applied different versions of a test asking whether the page looked and functioned like a government account. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, rejected the appearance test and replaced it with a two-element inquiry into actual authority and official use, remanding the case.
How does the two-part test work?
The elements are cumulative, and the burden sits with the plaintiff:
- Actual authority. The official must possess the power to speak for the government on the specific matter — under statute, ordinance, or written policy or custom. A city manager announcing city policy qualifies in principle; a legislator's personal account generally does not, because legislative representatives speak for constituents collectively, not for the government as an instrument.
- Official use. The official must actually invoke that authority in the relevant post. The Court suggested weight falls on how the account is described and labeled — a "official" page bearing a government title leans state, a "personal" disclaimer cuts the other way — and acknowledged the awkward middle case of a mixed account, where some posts are state action and others are not — a fact question the Court predicted would often be close.
On remand, the district court in 2025 found Freed's COVID posts were not state action, and the Sixth Circuit affirmed — the case ended without a finding of a violation, which made Lindke a test-defining rather than plaintiff-friendly precedent.
Why did the Court abandon the public-forum approach?
Lower courts had analyzed official accounts as public forums or designated forums — First Amendment categories built for streets, parks, and meeting rooms. The Supreme Court found the analogy unworkable for a private platform's property and terms of service, noting the government can be held responsible only for its own actions, not for a company's moderation decisions. The authority test replaces place-based doctrine with an office-based one: the question is not what the account resembles but what power the officeholder is exercising when posting.
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What happened to the other social media cases?
Lindke came up alongside O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, where two California school trustees had blocked parents from their campaign-style pages; the Court vacated and remanded it under the new test. Both 2024 cases reached the Court after the Ninth Circuit had sided with the blocked users, whose children had been unable to reach the trustees about school matters. The same term, Murthy v. Missouri dismissed a challenge to federal officials' communications with platforms for lack of standing, and Moody v. NetChoice sent state laws regulating platform moderation back for proper First Amendment analysis. The combined message was institutional: the Court preferred bright-line structural rules over the case-by-case line-drawing the lower courts had attempted.
What remedies can a blocked commenter actually get?
A claim under Section 1983 yields money damages, nominal relief if no harm is provable, injunctive relief requiring an unblock, and attorney's fees for a prevailing plaintiff. Damage amounts in these cases are typically modest — the constitutional value lies mostly in restoring access and setting policy. Municipalities face deeper exposure than the individual official, because Lindke ties authority to policy and custom: a city that adopts a written social media policy designating certain accounts official has, in the same stroke, likely created the first element of the test for any later dispute. That paradox is now central to the drafting advice every municipal counsel gives.
Did the earlier Trump Twitter case survive?
Only as history. The Second Circuit held in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump in 2019 that President Donald Trump's blocking of users from the @realDonaldTrump account violated the First Amendment, reasoning that the account functioned as a public forum for official announcements. The Supreme Court vacated the ruling as moot in April 2021 after Trump left office, so it sets no binding precedent. Lindke's authority-based approach would now govern any similar dispute, and it is a harder standard for plaintiffs than the forum analysis the Second Circuit used.
What does this change for officials and constituents?
As of mid-2026 the practical guidance runs in two directions. Officials who want to moderate freely should maintain clearly designated personal accounts, avoid using government authority in posts, and let institutional accounts carry official announcements. Officials who choose to speak with authority online inherit First Amendment duties: viewpoint-based blocking and deletion of critical comments on those posts can support Section 1983 damages claims, plus fee-shifting. For constituents, the test shifts litigation from how a page looks to what paper trail authorizes it — requests for statutes, charters, and social media policies now do the work discovery once promised. The deeper change is that Lindke made the boundary a matter of governmental structure rather than digital aesthetics, which settles the framework but leaves every mixed-use account a fact case. Expect the doctrine to grow by disclaimers: the more precisely an office separates its personal and official accounts, the fewer disputes will survive the pleading stage at all.