First Amendment argument fuels case against mid-Missouri lawmaker
Lawyers met at the federal courthouse in Kansas City on Friday to present their arguments in a case filed against Republican state Rep. Cheri Toalson Reisch.
The hearing before Judge Brian C. Wimes took about two hours.
Only Reisch and Centralia attorney Mike Campbell, the plaintiff, were called as witnesses.
Plaintiff’s case
The plaintiff’s argument was that Reisch’s status as an elected official should bar her from blocking constituents on social media platforms, specifically twitter.
The case was filed after Campbell saw he had been blocked by the representative after he retweeted a post by Democratic state Rep. Kip Kendrick.
The tweet had called Reisch out for a post that had been intended as a political attack on her then-opponent, Maren Bell Jones.
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/Kip_Kendrick/status/1010525548605566976″,”author_name”:”Kip Kendrick”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/Kip_Kendrick”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;Maren’s father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. &#lt;br&#gt;&#lt;br&#gt;Two of her brothers served in the military.&#lt;br&#gt;&#lt;br&#gt;I don’t question &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/docjones44?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;@docjones44&#lt;/a&#gt; patriotism. That’s a low blow and unacceptable from a member of the Boone County delegation. &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/eVoKhrvkQU”&#gt;https://t.co/eVoKhrvkQU&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Kip Kendrick (@Kip_Kendrick) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/Kip_Kendrick/status/1010525548605566976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;June 23, 2018&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
“This case is about a public official hearing the concerns of their constituents and understanding that not all their constituents may agree with them but that doesn’t give them the right to silence their constituents,” said Campbell.
Campbell’s attorney, Andy Hirth, attempted to demonstrate to the court that Reisch used her Twitter account @CheriMO44 for public statements related to her role as representative for the 44th District.
Defendant’s case
Reisch’s defense was structured on the claim that a public forum must be owned and controlled by the government.
Lowell Pearson, Reisch’s attorney, also argued that Campbell was not signifigantly inhibited from the social media platform.
“Blocking doesn’t mean what everyone thinks it means,” Pearson told the court.
Reisch claimed on the stand that she only blocked Twitter accounts that she didn’t know, repeatedly saying she didn’t know each account that Hirth listed from her blocked pages.
The list included the Twitter accounts for Progress Missouri and Race Matters, Friends.
Visibly frustrated, Reisch also testified that she rarely used the social media platform and considered deleting her account permanantly.
“People have the right to shout it from the rooftop, but I have the right not to listen,” Reisch said. “Just because I’m an elected official doesn’t mean I have to listen to people.”
Pearson worked to demonstrate that the accounts that Reisch blocked on social media were not politically motivated and that no government resources were used in the process of setting up her twitter account or in publishing any of the tweets.
What’s next?
Attorneys for Campbell and Reisch have 45 days to submit recommendations to the court.
“It seems likely to me that the case will be appealed to the 8tht Circuit by whomever doesn’t prevail,” said Hirth.
A federal judge in New York ruled in May 2018 that President Donald Trump was in violation of the Constitution when he blocked users on Twitter.
