Facts
- The University of Wisconsin–Madison operated official Instagram and Facebook accounts and permitted public comments.
- The university maintained a written moderation policy allowing removal or hiding of comments deemed, among other things, threatening, profane, off-topic, commercial, or otherwise injurious or illegal.
- Social-media managers exercised discretion to hide or remove comments and used a keyword filter that automatically hid comments containing selected terms unless approved by a moderator.
- Filtered terms included profanity/harassment-related words and phrases and terms associated with animal-testing criticism (as well as some political terms).
- Madeline Krasno, a university graduate and former primate-lab worker, posted comments on several university social-media posts in 2020 criticizing the university’s primate research and urging it to end such research.
- The university hid Krasno’s Instagram comments and temporarily restricted her account so her future comments were automatically hidden unless approved; the university also deleted one of her Facebook comments.
- Krasno alleged the actions were viewpoint-based censorship of animal-rights criticism; the university asserted it enforced an off-topic rule to keep comment threads focused on the subject of each post.
- Krasno sued for declaratory and injunctive relief and nominal damages under the First Amendment; both sides moved for summary judgment.
Issues
- Whether the university’s enforcement of an “off-topic” moderation rule (including keyword filters and account restrictions) was a reasonable and viewpoint-neutral limitation consistent with the First Amendment.
- Whether the Eleventh Amendment barred official-capacity claims seeking retrospective relief for past hiding/deleting of comments and past account restrictions.
- Whether Krasno had standing to seek prospective injunctive relief against continued use of keyword filters and future moderation practices.
- Whether individual officials were entitled to qualified immunity for their moderation decisions.
- Whether the moderation actions violated the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.
Decision
- Granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment and denied Krasno’s motion.
- Held the off-topic moderation rule and its application were reasonable and viewpoint-neutral under forum analysis and did not violate the First Amendment.
- Held the Eleventh Amendment barred official-capacity claims for retrospective relief based on completed past moderation actions.
- Held Krasno lacked standing to pursue an injunction against future use of keyword filters and future moderation because she did not show a real and immediate threat of future injury.
- Held the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity because the relevant First Amendment limits on university-run social-media moderation were not clearly established.
- Rejected the Petition Clause claim.
Legal Principles
- In government-controlled interactive spaces treated as designated or limited public forums, restrictions may be upheld if they are reasonable in light of the forum’s purpose and viewpoint neutral.
- A rule distinguishing on-topic from off-topic speech may be content-based yet permissible if applied without discriminating among viewpoints.
- The Eleventh Amendment generally bars retrospective relief against state officials in their official capacities; prospective relief requires an ongoing or imminent violation.
- Article III standing for injunctive relief requires a real and immediate likelihood of future injury, not only past harm.
- Qualified immunity shields officials from damages unless existing precedent clearly establishes the unlawfulness of the challenged conduct.
Conclusion
The court upheld the university’s social-media moderation decisions as permissible on-topic management rather than viewpoint discrimination, dismissed official-capacity claims for past actions under sovereign immunity, found no standing for forward-looking injunctive relief, and granted qualified immunity to individual officials.