Landman v. Scott

A Colorado resident and a Colorado state senator reached an agreement to resolve a lawsuit filed by the resident in May 2019 seeking an injunction requiring the state senator to unblock the plaintiff—whom the complaint characterized as “an outspoken critic” of the state senator, including on climate change issues—from his social media discussions. The complaint alleged that the state senator had banned the plaintiff from his Facebook page and blocked her interactions with his Twitter account in 2017 after she wrote a blog article and posted comments critical of the state senator’s positions on climate change and climate science. In a joint motion to dismiss the case, the parties said the state senator had not been aware of case law addressing whether government officials could ban users on social media accounts based on the users’ viewpoints. The motion then cited recent cases that found such bans to be unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. While the state senator did not take a position on the case law, he agreed to unblock the plaintiff, to refrain from blocking individuals and organizations from his official social media accounts, and to pay the plaintiff $25,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs.