Community Voices: The Risks of Mixing Personal Platforms With Public Office

Laura Kapuscinski

How free is your speech when you willingly participate in an organization or government agency that limits your ability to speak freely?

This past November, local New Jersey media outlets reported on a Salem County Board of Education member, Gail Nazarene, who came under harsh scrutiny and faced an ethics complaint for using her personal social media page to engage with residents about a matter involving Board business.

Generally speaking, Board members and Boards as a whole do not maintain official government social media pages, which makes anything posted, shared, or commented on inherently private.

The public has a right to understand and be informed about the business of a governing body, and there are protections, namely under the Open Public Records Act, intended to ensure transparency. Private social media posts, comments, and discussions limit the ability for full transparency within an organization or governing body.

Nazarene has argued in favor of the First Amendment, asserting that “we have a right to speak in this country, people died so that we can speak in this country.” However, the School Ethics Commission has been interpreting the School Ethics Act, which Board members take an oath to uphold, to prohibit speaking freely about matters concerning Board business outside of official meetings.

As of late, we are seeing more corporations and even volunteer organizations, such as school PTOs, adopt policies and bylaws that restrict what employees and volunteers are permitted to say publicly.

While a strong argument can certainly be made that all citizens have a right to exercise their speech, beliefs, and opinions, once a person willingly accepts a job or volunteer position, elected or not, they are sometimes compromising those full freedoms in order to abide by the policies and regulations of that organization. I would further argue that if you do not agree with the rules of an organization you work or volunteer for, you have the free will and right to quit or step down.

The issue with social media use by elected officials ultimately comes down to optics and perception. Elected representatives already have the ability to request public meetings to share information and solicit feedback. Using a private social media account for the same purpose can appear selective and secretive.

I have personally been on the other side of this argument, when an organization I volunteered for prohibited my involvement in politics. I had the option to step down and walk away, but I ultimately decided the work I was doing was more important than publicly sharing my political preferences. Each individual has the right to walk away from an organization or agency when their beliefs no longer align.

Elected officials are held to a higher standard than private citizens and are therefore expected to abide by a different set of rules. While there may be limitations on free speech, those limitations are generally considered permissible when the speech or social media posts are directly related to the duties and responsibilities an official was elected to perform.

Submitted directly by the author; content reflects their own views

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