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by WILL FOLKS
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South Carolina’s left-leaning capital city is coming under fire from a First Amendment advocacy group after allegedly imposing “unconstitutional restrictions on comments” on its social media pages.
The City of Columbia and the Columbia Police Department (CPD) announced in late June the institution of a “zero tolerance for hate speech” policy on their social media platforms – including the apparent adoption of a “block list” for violators.
“We have seen an increase in vulgar, racist, threatening, bullying, and disrespectful comments under reels and other posts,” the city and its police force noted. “This type of language and behavior will not be tolerated on our social media platforms.”
“Comments that violate these standards may be hidden, removed, or handled accordingly,” the post continued.
Take a look…
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The city’s attempt to police interaction online drew a swift rebuke from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a group which “defends free speech nationwide.”
According to a letter from FIRE’s director of public advocacy, Aaron Terr, the city’s new policy – and its preexisting rules regarding social media interaction – “unlawfully restrict First Amendment-protected expression.”
“As the Supreme Court recently made clear, when government actors use social media for official business, they must comply with the First Amendment,” Terr noted in his letter (.pdf). “The government cannot evade these constitutional requirements with a notice that commenters accept other terms.”
According to FIRE, the city is engaging in subjective discrimination of “viewpoint-based” judgements.
“CPD may not restrict speech—whether by hiding comments, deleting them entirely, or blocking users — simply because it subjectively finds the speech inappropriate, offensive, racist, disrespectful, or bullying,” he wrote, adding that the city must “revise its Facebook comment policy to comply with the First Amendment, remove or update the June 25 post, and commit to refraining from deleting comments, hiding comments, or blocking users over constitutionally protected speech.”
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The city was given until August 20, 2026 to provide a “substantive response” to FIRE, per the letter.
“CPD said that disfavored comments would be ‘handled accordingly,’” Terr said in a statement accompanying the letter. “Leaving them up is the only way to handle them accordingly. The department should stick to policing crime, not constitutionally protected speech.”
As FITSNews has repeatedly chronicled, Columbia’s city government has a long history of trampling on individual liberty – so its attempt to shut down free expression online comes as no surprise to us.
The only question now is whether city leaders will comply with their obligations under the Constitution voluntarily – or whether FIRE will have to drag them into federal court, costing taxpayers significant money in legal fees.
Based on the city’s prior responses, we should probably expect the latter…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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