A federal lawsuit has been filed against a sitting sheriff based on assertions that he limited the speech of dissenters on the official Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.
Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens is being sued by his former political opponent David Cavender and two Cobb County citizens who allege that the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office page partakes in censorship.
The allegations of censorship stem from an incident involving Owens, who was Sheriff at the time, at a Burger King. In 2023, Owens was captured on camera calling deputies to a Burger King for the purposes of getting the manager’s name because of his dissatisfaction with an order. The deputies ran code and used blue lights to respond to the call.
In an interview with Atlanta’s WSBTV, Owens said, ““I thought the best thing to do was to call a deputy,” Owens told the Atlanta television station. “In hindsight, I probably should have just drove off and took the bad service and left and came back another day.”
The video of the incident was shared during the most recent election cycle and posted widely on social media. Opponents of Owens started making comments about the video on the official Cobb County Sheriff’s Office page as well. According to the lawsuit filed in federal court, Cavender and the two residents, Michael Dondelinger and Michele Beagle, began restricting the comments on the incident.
The lawsuit claims: “Instead of upholding the First Amendment and stomaching speech he found personally distasteful, Owens decided instead to utilize the powers of his office to censor the speech of Plaintiffs, and others, based on viewpoint.”
The Cavender, Dondelinger, and Beagle are seeking a $3.50 judgment and an injunction from the court, ordering Owens to stop restricing the social media accounts.
More recently, the Sheriff’s Office has begun limiting the comments on the Facebook page altogether and encouraging people to use the county’s mobile app instead. “Although Facebook may show comments as ‘limited,’ no comments will be allowed,” the page posted in early November.
Legal Basis
The standard established by the courts requires that rules be ‘viewpoint neutral,’ in that if one viewpoint is welcome, all viewpoints are welcome. Notable cases surrounding this issue include City of Madison Joint School District No. 8 v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission,(1976), in Wilkinson v. Bensalem Township (1993), and City of Dayton v. Esrati (1997).
Additionally, the courts have long held that citizens have a First Amendment right to interact with government officials in a political forum. In both a 1997 case (Zeran v. Am. Online, Inc) and the noteworthy Packingham v. North Carolina case before the U.S. Supreme Court, the internet and social media have been deemed public forums in the same traditional sense as parks and streets.
