The Lawsuit Against Joe Gale – A Closer Look
The Plaintiffs are making a Federal Case out of it.
The lawsuit against Joe Gale and “Friends of Joe Gale” was brought in U.S. District Court, in the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania.
The suit is a “Motion for Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction.” If the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, Joe Gale will be forced to “return Plaintiffs to the ‘unbanned’ or ‘unblocked’ status they previously enjoyed on Defendants’ social media accounts, retain them in ‘unbanned’ status, and immediately cease further actions to delete or remove commentary from these social media accounts that they find objectionable.”
Click here to see the full complaint
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the three social media platforms where Gale removes posts and comments that he does not like, and blocks individuals who write what he perceives to be unfavorable posts and comments about him.
The plaintiffs argue in their complaint, that Gale has violated the first amendment rights of the people whose posts/comments he has removed and/or blocked from his social media accounts.
The plaintiffs’ legal action was triggered by Gale’s June 1 press release in which he wrote, “The perpetrators of this urban domestic terror are radical left-wing hate groups like Black Lives Matter.”
The lawsuit does not challenge the content of Gale’s statement, although iit does note that it drew “widespread public condemnation, including on Commissioner Gale’s social media Pages where it was primarily disseminated.”
The plaintiffs charge that “Rather than address public criticism and disapproval of the statement, Defendants instead blocked a number of constituents and members of the public, including several plaintiffs in this lawsuit, from commenting on or accessing his social media pages
The plaintiffs claim that they warned Gale that his “continued viewpoint discrimination would trigger this instant action.”
Gale’s response, according to the plaintiffs, was to claim, “that the identified social media accounts at issue are ‘private.’ “
The complaint goes on at length to dispute Gale’s defense, that his social media accounts were and are “private.”
For example, the plaintiffs charge that “This June 1 press release, issued on letterhead bearing the seal of Montgomery County, and under Defendant Gale’s official title as Montgomery County Commissioner, was never released through official government channels (emphasis added). Rather, Defendant Gale released it sua sponte through the particular identified social media accounts which Plaintiffs now challenge.
The complaint cites several precedents.
The complaint contains references to decisions by courts in “neighboring circuits,” that “have ruled that the interactive spaces of public officials social media platforms constitute public fora and that censorship of critical comments in those spaces constitutes viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.”
Plaintiffs Gave Gale Prior Warning
According to the plaintiffs, the defendants took steps in an attempt to make Gale’s social media accounts to appear private, but they argue that “any steps that Defendants took to make those accounts appear more private were after-the fact actions taken in a deliberate attempt to avoid accountability for Defendants’ censorship.”
In their legal analysis, the plaintiffs offer several precedents which they believe bolsters their claim that Gale is a “State Actor” who has transformed what otherwise could be considered to be his private property [his social media accounts] into a public forum, by his actions.
Just becacuse you never heard of him, doesn’t mean he hasn’t been around for a while.
Click here to learn more about Joe Gale.