Jeff Swanson v. Couy Griffin, et al.

Our town square is now digital. Elected officials are capable of hosting thousands of constituents in public town halls to discuss the public’s business from a lawn chair in their backyard on social media platforms with greater technical or logistical ease than ever before. More importantly, viewpoints that elected officials disagree with are just as easily excluded from these town halls held in virtual public squares, yet under current precedent from this Court and the Tenth Circuit citizens have no remedy for recognized viewpoint discrimination that violates the protections of the First Amendment. The jurisprudence surrounding social media and protections for First Amendment protected speech is or at least was heading in the proper direction but this Court’s decision in Biden v. Knight First Amendment Inst. At Columbia Univ., 141 S. Ct. 1220 (2021) to moot and vacate the Second Circuit’s holding in Knight First Amendment Inst. At Columbia Univ. v. Trump, 928 F.3d 226 (2019) aborted the progression of that protection for individuals such as Mr. Swanson in the Tenth Circuit the law needs to meets the impacts of technology on the exercise of civil liberties. Thus, the question presented is: Did the Tenth Circuit err in reversing the decision of the District Court that Commissioner Couy Griffin was not entitled to qualified immunity after the Circuit recognized that Commissioner Griffin had engaged in viewpoint discrimination to exclude Mr. Swanson from his open to the public Facebook page where he openly discussed the public’s business that he was elected to attend to?