Elizabeth Schulte v Kenneth Leners, 25-1856
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit Civil Civil Rights and Section 1983
Holdings
- Seventh Circuit denies qualified immunity for official's viewpoint-based deletion of comments from town website
- Municipalities cannot pursue interlocutory qualified-immunity appeals; that defense protects only individual officials, not entities
- Useful for §1983 and First Amendment litigators handling government social media, public comment forums, and qualified immunity defenses
Summary
Elizabeth Schulte sued a town official, Kenneth Leners, and the Town of Cedar Lake under 42 U.S.C. §1983, alleging that Leners violated her First Amendment rights by selectively deleting her comments and others' from the Town's website based on viewpoint, and by later shutting down comment sections entirely. The district court denied Leners's motion to dismiss on qualified-immunity grounds as to the selective-deletion claims, and Leners and the Town took an interlocutory appeal.
The Seventh Circuit first limited its jurisdiction, holding it could review only the qualified-immunity question tied to Leners's selective deletion of comments—not the separate shutting-down-of-comments theory, which the district court never addressed on qualified-immunity grounds and which Leners conceded at oral argument was not properly before the court. The court also dismissed the Town's portion of the appeal outright, holding that qualified immunity is a defense available only to individual officials, not municipalities, under Owen v. Independence.
On the merits, the court held Leners was not entitled to qualified immunity because it was clearly established as of September 2022 that a government violates the First Amendment by hosting private speech on an official website with no policy or history of content regulation, then engaging in viewpoint-based deletion. The court found the Town's comment section was a public forum for private speech—not government speech—because the Town exercised no meaningful editorial control over content, distinguishing cases where government curation transformed private submissions into government speech. This decision offers a clear framework for evaluating qualified-immunity defenses in cases involving government-run online forums and social media comment sections.
In short
The court's jurisdiction under Mitchell v. Forsyth to review denial of qualified immunity is limited to legal questions about clearly established law and does not extend to theories (like shutting down comment sections) the district court did not address on qualified-immunity grounds.
Qualified immunity is a defense available only to individual officials, not municipalities; the Town of Cedar Lake therefore had no basis to bring an interlocutory appeal.
Leners was not entitled to qualified immunity because it was clearly established in September 2022 that viewpoint-based deletion of comments from a government website lacking any content-moderation policy or history violates the First Amendment.
A government website's comment section constitutes a public forum for private speech, not government speech, where the government exercises no meaningful control over the content of the comments posted.
This summary was drafted by AI and verified against the slip opinion. It may contain errors and is not legal advice — always read the original before relying on it.