ATLANTA – Today, the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia sent a letter to the State Senator John Albers warning him for appearing to engage in government censorship to silence constituents who have been blocked from posting on, or even viewing, his official government social media pages.
"In this era of unprecedented attacks on our democracy, freedom of speech is more important than ever," said Sean J. Young, Legal Director for the ACLU of Georgia.
As the letter explained, “no government official can escape the requirements of the First Amendment by masquerading their actual government Facebook page as a ‘personal’ page, and then by curating the contents of that page to ensure that it is filled only with glowing praise. A reasonable observer might believe, rightly or wrongly, that this is what your office has done.”
In recent months, the ACLU of Georgia also sent demand letters to three sheriffs, a police department, the secretary of state, a U.S. Senator, and three members of Congress demanding that they stop censoring their critics who post on official government social media accounts.
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