Sheriff dumps Facebook over lawsuit

— When someone posts an unflattering picture or nasty slur on your personal Facebook page, you delete it.

But what happens when the Facebook page belongs to a public, taxpayer-funded agency?

It's the question now facing the Sheriff's Department, which took down its Facebook fan page two weeks ago after being sued by an outspoken Oceanside gun parts dealer with a grudge.

In a lawsuit filed Oct. 27 in San Diego federal court, Dimitrios Karras claims his First Amendment right to free speech was violated when the department deleted two Facebook posts that were critical of the sheriff and then banned him from further commenting.

The lawsuit opens up legal questions over government's growing use of social media, and to what degree officials should be able to control the public conversation.

Karras' lawyers say sites like Facebook are the new public forum, similar to a town hall or a protest in a park, and as long as government agencies are opening up the floor for public comment, then all citizens should be allowed to voice their opinions. A similar lawsuit in Hawaii, believed to be the first to tackle this issue, was settled, with the Honolulu Police Department agreeing to allow unrestricted posting.

'They must allow speech to be heard, even if it's obnoxious,' said Karras' attorney, Scott McMillan. 'Unless it's something egregious, they have limited latitude in censoring.'

Senior Deputy County Counsel Thomas Bunton argued that Karras' comments did not follow the participation guidelines posted by the Sheriff's Department and were off-topic. 'There is no doubt that the Sheriff can constitutionally regulate the comments that are made on his Facebook page,' Bunton writes in court papers. He pointed to a federal court ruling that says 'the government may limit the forum to certain groups or subjects - although it may not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint.'

First Amendment experts tend to agree with the county.

'It feels like a stretch to characterize this as a public forum,' said Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center in Tennessee. 'There's certainly an informational component and an invitation to the public to comment, but there are also guidelines ... and those include not posting abusive and defamatory content.'

In Karras' case, Paulson says the posts could be considered defamatory.

Sheriff Bill Gore [U-T file]- John Gibbins

According to the lawsuit, Karras posted a comment on Sept. 3 using the pseudonym of 'Jim Block' under a posting about braking for school buses: 'Sheriff Gore: Do you plead the 5th about your involvement in the MURDER of an unarmed woman who was holding her baby? REMEMBER RUBY RIDGE.'

He had posted a similar comment the day before under his own name. The Sheriff's Department deleted both comments and banned him from posting under his own name.

The comments refer to a 1992 standoff on a remote Idaho mountaintop called Ruby Ridge. Gore, then an FBI supervisor, was called in to help with the apprehension of a white supremacist holed up with his family in a cabin. At one point, an FBI sniper mistakenly shot and killed the man's wife, who was holding a 10-month-old baby. Several FBI agents were penalized for their roles in the incident, Gore was not among them.