Maine Gov. Paul LePage is being sued by his state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union for blocking constituents from his Facebook page.
The ACLU of Maine filed a complaint Tuesday in a federal court in Maine on behalf of two residents who claim they were blocked from looking at the “Paul LePage, Maine’s Governor” page on the social media platform.
The lawsuit asks the court to find the act of blocking people as unconstitutional under the First Amendment. It also requests that the court order the Republican governor to stop “censoring” Facebook users and restore access rights to those who have been blocked.
“Social media has quickly become a crucial tool for constituents to express their opinions to public officials,” ACLU attorney Meagan Sway said in a statement. “Free speech must be protected from government censorship on Facebook just as is it in any other public forum.”
A LePage spokeswoman did not respond immediately to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner, but a post on the page paints past attacks as being politically fueled endeavors to undermine the governor.
“To be clear this page was started by volunteers in the Governor’s first campaign to support his candidacy,” the post reads. “After that time it became his official political page. This page has never been managed by taxpayer-funded state employees.”
President Trump faces a similar legal case for blocking Twitter users, after a suit was filed against him by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in July.
LePage made headlines in August 2016 for leaving a expletive-laced voicemail message for Democratic State Rep. Drew Gattine over claims Gattine had called the governor racist.
