Like This Decision on Facebook

Facebook likes are form of free speech.  That is the judgment of a federal appeals court.  From the Wall Street journal:

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a former deputy sheriff in Hampton, Va., who said he was sacked for “liking” the Facebook page of a man running against his boss for city sheriff.

“Liking” the campaign page, the court said, was the “Internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one’s front yard, which the Supreme Court has held is substantive speech.”

 Why is this ruling important?

Courts have granted First Amendment protection in the past to written posts on Facebook, Judge Jackson pointed out in his April 2012 ruling. But he put those cases in a separate category of speech, because they involved “actual statements.”

Chief Judge William B. Traxler Jr., writing for a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit, said no such distinction exists.

“On the most basic level, clicking on the ‘like’ button literally causes to be published the statement that the User ‘likes’ something, which is itself a substantive statement,” wrote Judge Traxler for the court, which ruled unanimously on the Facebook issue.

This seems like a small and logical judicial decision, but it has big implications for employment law and, hence, organizations of all kinds.