SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio officials have agreed to amend the city’s social media policy, after a national free speech group called out Animal Care Services for hiding hundreds of comments from its public Facebook page.
“As a city agency, Animal Care Services can’t censor speech because it doesn’t like the viewpoint being expressed or to insulate itself from criticism,” said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy for the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE.
Terr’s organization this summer filed a records request for a copy of all Facebook comments hidden or deleted by ACS over a one-month period of time, after receiving complaints from multiple commenters.
The hidden comments handed over included one calling the agency a “disgrace” and another that referred to ACS as a slaughterhouse, records show.
Last month, FIRE sent a letter to ACS Interim Director Michael Shannon ostracizing the agency for hiding more than 400 comments from the page over the one-month period.
The letter stated that around 80% of the hidden comments was criticism of the agency’s euthanasia policy.
“It’s that the government is interfering with the ability of the people to discuss and debate issues that are important to them. That is what free speech is all about,” said Terr. “The government can’t censor speech online any more than it can in the offline world. So, it doesn’t matter if you’re speaking at a city council meeting or in a public park or in the comment section of a government run Facebook account. The First Amendment protects you.”
Case in point, the sentencing last month of dog owners Christian Moreno and Abilene Schnieder.
Both the widow of the man mauled to death by the couple’s dogs last year, Janie Najera, and District Court Judge Velia Meza criticized ACS during the hearing.
“And right now there’s somebody that should be sitting there right next to you guys and it should be the city. The city should be there sitting next to you guys because they’re guilty too,” said Najera through tears.
ACS had been criticized during sentencing and pretrial hearings for Moreno and Schnieder, for failing to permanently seize the dogs despite them previously attacking people in the Southwest Side neighborhood.
“Clearly our city has a lot of work to do to provide services to deal with responsible dog ownership,” Judge Meza said during the sentencing hearing.
Court rules that filtering negative commentary is unreasonable under the First Amendment
Courts in the United States have repeatedly sided with plaintiffs who have sued government agencies over their censoring of comments online.
In a ruling released in late July, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with opponents of animal testing.
They had sued the National Institutes of Health (NIH) years earlier over its use of keyword filters to block negative commentary on its social media pages.
The court’s opinion stated that the agency’s actions were “unreasonable under the First Amendment.”
COSA confirms it will change social media policy
Late last month, a deputy city attorney for the city of San Antonio informed FIRE that after “reviewing the current law related to this issue,” the city agreed that posts should not be removed or hidden except in very limited circumstances when there are threats of imminent harm, the letter states.
“As such, the City will no longer remove or hide posts on the Facebook page except in those very limited circumstances,” wrote Deputy City Attorney Deborah Klein.
City officials declined to make Shannon available for an interview for this story.
Asked by KSAT whether the city had identified or disciplined whomever was responsible for hiding the Facebook comments, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office said the comments, to their knowledge, were hidden in accordance with the city’s then-current administrative directive for social media.
That policy allowed page administrators to hide comments that were off topic, profane, obscene or discriminatory.
“The City is in the process of reviewing and revising its social media policy to assure it reflects current law, providing that posts will not be hidden or removed except where there is a significant government interest, such as imminent threats of violence,” the spokesman said via email late last month.
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.