Social media has had a profound impact on communications in the United States, transforming the way people connect, share information, and engage with one another. It has become an integral part of daily life for millions of Americans and in particular, various government actors and agencies. For example, social media provides a new platform for governments to engage with citizens, disseminate information, and gather public feedback. Due to the significance of social media in government-to-citizen communication, courts have concluded that social media is the new defining democratic forum. For instance, in Packingham v. North Carolina, the Court stated, “While in the past there may have been some difficulty in identifying the most important places (in a spatial sense) for the exchange of views, today the answer is clear. It is cyberspace—the ‘vast democratic forums of the Internet’ in general … and social media in particular.” This shift from traditional to modern communication modes has resulted in several challenges to First Amendment rights. Government actors have used social media to block constituents’ access to information.

Arizona Counties and Representatives Increasingly Use Social Media

Throughout the nation, there has been a shift in reliance on social media as a news source; however, Arizona is a particularly striking example of this dramatic shift and the associated risks.

Most of Arizona’s counties have social media pages where constituents can receive information about government activities. For example, Maricopa and Pima, Arizona’s two largest counties, interact with citizens through various platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. (See table 2 below). Smaller counties also use these platforms to communicate with the public; however, rural citizens more heavily rely on access to public officials’ social media accounts for news regarding governance, policy, and public services in the wake of the dwindling presence of traditional media. See generally Penelope Abernathy, Arizona, The Expanding News Desert, (2023), https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/states/arizona/. [J(1] [A(2] [J(3] Arizona’s local government officials have somewhere around two hundred and thirteen social media accounts between both chambers of the Arizona legislature, averaging roughly two accounts per representative or senator. Meanwhile, every member of Arizona’s delegation to Washington has at least three different social media accounts. (See table 1 below). The growing use of social media by government actors and agencies makes the curtailment of freedoms on these platforms more concerning.

Table 1: Arizona Politician’s Social Media Usage

Table 2: Arizona Counties’ Social Media Usage

The Day My State Representative Blocked Me!

In Arizona, it is common for public officials to use social media’s blocking function to restrict access to information, suppress dissent, and create a false narrative in support of activities that would otherwise draw criticism. Representative Bob Thorpe of the Arizona House, for instance, blocked users, including news reporters, from his Twitter account in 2013 after receiving censure for a racially insensitive tweet. Jeremy Duda, Thorpe Erases Tweets, Locks Down Twitter Account Following Racism Accusations, AZCapitol Times, August 14, 2013. The tweet followed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that the Department of Justice would not pursue mandatory minimum prison sentences for a large number of low-level, nonviolent drug offenders. Id.[J(4] [A(5] [J(6] [A(7]  Thorpe tweeted, “Why is Holder [U.S. Attorney General] now Soft on Crime? Perhaps: blacks=12%-13% US population, but make up 40/1% (2.1 million) of male inmates in jail or prison!” Id.

In early 2022, Joshua Gray, a politically engaged Arizonan and frequent Twitter user, was blocked from then Representative Anthony Kern’s[J(8] [A(9]  Twitter account. The block followed Mr. Gray’s critique of Senator Kern’s involvement in the January 6^th Capitol attack.[J(10] [A(11]  The criticisms leveled against Senator Kern were not well received and, according to Gray, Senator Kern responded to Gray’s criticisms with a “snarky response[J(12] [A(13] [J(14] .” Id. Despite having negligible contact with Kern, Kern blocked Mr. Gray. Id. In 2022, Kern was elected as Mr. Gray’s state representative, much to his dismay. Id.

Senator Kern uses Twitter for various purposes, including discussing his political beliefs, expressing opinions on significant issues, and disseminating information about local, state, and federal affairs. Id. Twitter is not the only social media platform used by Senator Kern, but it is by far his preferred platform. Despite various attempts to contact Senator Kern regarding the block, Gray has not received a response from Kern. Id. Gray said, “I’ve written and called his office a bunch of times to see if he could unblock me, but I haven’t heard back.” Id. This block effectively prevents Gray from accessing Senator Kern’s governance and policy perspectives. Id. Gray indicated that since the block, he “ha[sn’t] had contact with him since.” Id.

The First Amendment Clinic, acting on behalf of journalist Amy Silverman, has recently won two important cases at the Arizona Court of Appeals.

In Silverman v. AHCCCS, the court ruled that agencies have to release database information in a usable format, and cannot obscure the connecting keys between data tables as protected health-care information without making an encrypted substitute for the key, so that the data is still usable. The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) has claimed that encrypting the keys would constitute the creation of a new record, which is not required under the public records law. The court held that “requiring the agency to use a one-way cryptographic hash function to redact the non-disclosable data — substituting a unique hashed value that masks protected information without destroying its function in the database — is necessary to ensure a requestor receives, to the extent possible, a copy of the real record.”

In Silverman v. DES, the court ruled last week that a journalist can qualify as a “bona fide researcher” for purposes of being allowed access to certain health-related files — although the files will still have to be heavily redacted to avoid identifying any individuals. The agency had said that journalists don’t qualify for that exemption from secrecy and denied Silverman access to the records completely, thus keeping her from examining how the Department of Economic Security (DES) handles complaints about incidents involving people with developmental disabilities. However, the agency may still be able to show that the request may be too burdensome, and it can still reject her request as long as it does not act “arbitrarily and capriciously” in doing so.

Two important decisions came down this morning at the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the important protections for all web sites (including the big social media sites) from liability based on what people post on their sites. The court held in Twitter v. Taamneh that web sites can’t be guilty of “aiding and abetting” criminal activity just because their sites were used by terrorist organizations, and in Gonzalez v. Google that there was no reason to determine if YouTube could be responsible when its algorithm decides to “recommend” videos that terrorist groups might use to recruit members.

Both cases are controversial, but both are important wins. Of course, nobody likes the idea that terrorists can plot attacks on social media and can get their posts distributed based on “likes.” But a decision that would have held the sites liable for these activities would have simply made speech on the Internet unrealistic for anyone who cannot afford to parse through every post on their site and somehow know if the poster has bad intentions. Free speech does come with some costs, and that has long been acknowledged in the history of First Amendment jurisprudence. You don’t have to approve of a neo-Nazi march through Skokie, Ill., to recognize that the right to speak should not be regulated by the government.

It’s tempting to point out that these cases aren’t really about traditionally speech, but facilitating others’ speech, and they involve multi-billion-dollar companies like YouTube and Twitter. But speech cases have often concerned the interests of other speakers, like when people have tried to hold bookstores accountable for what was written in a book they sold. Even the seminal libel case of New York Times v. Sullivan involved not the speech of the newspaper, but of an advertiser who wanted to let the world know what was happening to protesters and reformers in the South during the civil rights struggle. And Section 230’s protections are essential to the “little guy” publishers, who could be devastated and run out of business by lawsuits over something they never really stated themselves. Overall, it was a very good day for speech at the high court.

• Arizona Appellate Handbook (Lexis; State Bar) 
• Arizona Agency Handbook, Chapter 6 
• Arizona Ombudsman Public Records Law Booklet 
• Arizona Reporters Handbook on Media Law 
• Court rules, including Special Actions 
• Open Government Guide (RCFP)