Last week, the Reno County Commission approved an update to the county’s social media policy.
The policy it replaced only governed the use of the county’s official social media accounts, but the updated policy includes a little less than a page that applies to county employees’ personal social media accounts.
The portions about employees’ personal accounts boil down to two main points: don’t post secrets without authorization, and keep a metaphorical wall between your professional and personal lives. The latter point includes not presenting their personal opinions as official county positions, using county logos, branding, uniforms, vehicles or imagery to falsely imply official county endorsement or authorization, or presenting personal political activity as official county communications.
It is a tricky thing to balance. The county, like all of government, has a tangible interest in preventing employees from presenting their personal opinions as official policy. And there are serious ethics issues if employees say or imply that they have county endorsement of their own commercial or political efforts.
And the courts have ruled repeatedly that the government has more authority to restrict its employees’ speech than it does other citizens’. That is especially true of employees’ speech made pursuant to their duties.
But employees’ speech about matters of public concern remains protected by the First Amendment, when not made in the normal course of their duties, even when such speech is critical of the government. In the 1968 Supreme Court Case Pickering v. Board of Education, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, “[…] that statements by public officials on matters of public concern must be accorded First Amendment protection, despite the fact that the statements are directed at their nominal superiors.”
That case overturned a public school teacher’s firing over a letter he wrote to a newspaper, critical of school funding decisions made by his school district’s board of education in the Chicago suburbs, and the court has continued to cite the decision in the decades since.
Open discussion of matters of public concern is essential to the functioning of a free society. When the founders began enshrining personal liberties in our Constitution with the Bill of Rights, the freedom of speech was right there alongside freedom of religion, of the press, of assembly and to petition the government in the First Amendment. They understood the importance of free speech, as public debate played such an important role first in the 13 colonies’ decision to declare independence 250 years ago and as their new government took shape in the years following the victory of the American Revolution.
The First Amendment doesn’t exempt government employees from its protection of free speech, and excluding government employees from discussion of issues of public concern doesn’t serve the public’s best interest.
Reno County’s new social media policy is fairly specific and reasonable about what it disallows—it would be inappropriate for an employee to falsely suggest that the county endorsed their position on an issue, for example.
But the county will need to be careful to avoid discouraging constitutionally protected speech with its enforcement and implementation of the policy, including how it trains employees on the policy.
Government employees are citizens, first and foremost. Their employers shouldn’t lose sight of that.
–The Hutchinson Tribune Editorial Board