Wagschal v. Skoufis

Background

Eli Wagschal, a private citizen, sued James Skoufis under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Skoufis violated the First Amendment by blocking him from interacting with Skoufis’s official Facebook page. Wagschal alleged that he criticized Skoufis for not condemning comments about the Hasidic Jewish community that Wagschal considered racist and antisemitic. Skoufis blocked Wagschal from interacting with the page on or around August 5, 2018.

Wagschal sought declaratory and injunctive relief, compensatory damages, attorney’s fees and costs, and punitive damages. After the lawsuit began, Skoufis unblocked Wagschal. Wagschal later acknowledged that he could comment on Skoufis’s page during 2019. The opinion also states that Skoufis later unhid Wagschal’s comments.

Motions and issues

Skoufis moved to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), arguing that the claims for declaratory and injunctive relief were moot because Wagschal had been unblocked. Skoufis also argued that state sovereign immunity barred damages claims based on his official-capacity conduct.

Separately, Skoufis sought summary judgment based on qualified immunity for the damages claim based on his individual-capacity conduct. Qualified immunity can protect government officials from damages when their conduct did not violate a constitutional right that was clearly established at the time.

Rulings on declaratory and injunctive relief

The court held that Wagschal’s requests for declaratory and injunctive relief were moot. Although the parties agreed that Wagschal had standing when he filed the complaint, the court explained that a case must remain a live dispute throughout the litigation.

Because Skoufis had unblocked Wagschal, had allowed him to interact with the page throughout the case, and represented that he did not intend to block Wagschal again, the court found no reasonable expectation that the alleged violation would recur. The court also found that the effects of the alleged violation had been completely and irrevocably eliminated. It rejected Wagschal’s argument that the comments remained hidden, noting that Wagschal had not alleged, and applicable precedent did not recognize, a right to have comments displayed publicly on an official’s social-media page. The court therefore dismissed the claims for declaratory and injunctive relief as moot.

Official-capacity damages

The court held that state sovereign immunity barred Wagschal’s damages claims based on Skoufis’s official-capacity conduct. Under the court’s explanation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a state and its officials acting in their official capacities are not treated as persons who can be sued for damages under that statute. The court therefore dismissed those damages claims.

Individual-capacity damages and qualified immunity

The court granted summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity for the individual-capacity damages claim. It assumed Wagschal’s version of the facts for purposes of the qualified-immunity analysis and evaluated the motion under the summary-judgment standard.

The court focused on whether the right Wagschal asserted was clearly established when Skoufis blocked him in August 2018. It explained that clearly established law must be particularized to the facts and supported by controlling authority or a strong body of persuasive decisions. At that time, the Second Circuit had not yet ruled on whether a public official violated the First Amendment by blocking a constituent from interacting with an official social-media account. The Second Circuit’s decision addressing that issue came later, in July 2019.

The court concluded that earlier public-forum cases involving government workplaces, airport terminals, and public parks did not clearly establish the rule for a government official’s use of a privately operated social-media platform. It also concluded that the few social-media cases Wagschal cited did not amount to a strong consensus clearly establishing the asserted right. Because the law was not clearly established when Skoufis acted, the court held that qualified immunity shielded him from damages and stated that it did not need to decide whether his conduct was objectively reasonable.

Disposition

The court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss. It also granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity. The court directed the Clerk of Court to close the relevant docket entry.