Lawsuit Over Deleted Facebook Comment Proceeding In Yardley

YARDLEY, PA — A free speech lawsuit against borough officials who deleted a resident's comment from a Patch.com story on Facebook will proceed, a federal judge has ruled.

"The court's decision was a win for the First Amendment," said Earl J. Markey III, who filed the lawsuit in November 2022 after his comment criticizing a then-council member about the borough's budget was removed.

Patch had written a story that Yardley was facing a possible tax hike in its 2023 budget.

The day after the Facebook comment was deleted, Markey said he filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania seeking injunctive relief and monetary damages.

A federal judge said the lawsuit against two borough officials will move forward because they are not protected from legal action for deleting Markey's comment.

“(The plaintiffs) argue the interested resident did not have a clearly established right to criticize borough issues by commenting on the official Facebook page in October 2022,” District Judge Mark A. Kearney wrote. “We disagree, finding a robust consensus of established law from five courts of appeals and several trial courts clearly established this right in October 2022,” the Bucks County Courier Times reported.

Borough Manager Paula Johnson flagged the comment as a personal attack and got permission from Council President Caroline Thompson to remove the post several hours later, according to court documents.

Patch sent an email to Johnson and Thompson seeking comment, but none was provided.

Markey said he expects the case to go to trial in November.

Markey provided the court documents to Patch when he filed the lawsuit:

“Removing comments that are protected by the First Amendment from public social media pages is a blatant civil rights violation. This violation is particularly egregious because the Yardley Borough official who decided to censor my comment used another official Borough Facebook page to promote an opposing view as people vote by mail," Markey said. "Public officials across the country should take notice and tread carefully: Censoring protected speech from official social media pages may quickly land you in Federal Court in these circumstances.”

Markey was responsible for getting a special question getting an election ballot question that year to reduce the council's size from seven to five. The referendum was rejected by voters.

He won a write-in campaign in the May primary election as the Republican candidate to challenge Thompson, a Democrat, to run in November as the borough's next mayor.