Social Media, Meeting Rooms, and the First Amendment社会媒体，会议室，与第一修正案.pptVIP

Both prohibit political and commercial activity in some way and both discuss how to remove offensive language. Summary: We have looked at how legal doctrine may be challenged by new technology along with a discussion of some issues to consider when drafting social media policies. * Although a meeting room policy might not seem related to comments on a Facebook wall, the public forum doctrine we have discussed impacts this aspect of libraries, too. Forum doctrine also affects library displays/bulletin boards. * Depending on how the library writes its policy it could create a designated or limited forum. If there are more restrictions on who can access it, the policy is more likely to be viewed as a limited forum but if more groups are allowed in the policy will probably be characterized as a designated forum. * Two Supreme Court cases, Rosenberger v. Rectors of University of Virginia and Widmar, v. Vincent (although neither actually involved a library meeting room) demonstrate that providing access to many groups can create a designated public forum. This means the library could not make content-based restrictions, if the room was widely available to the public, on the discussion in the room. * Religious groups are a really tricky area of this doctrine. In general, the courts are protective of the rights of religious groups. A library can exclude groups hosting partisan political meetings but not meetings where political speech is involved. Commercial groups can be prohibited. Partisan political meetings covers only a small swath of political speech. * A library can restrict access to these groups by allowing access to “non profit groups” (and could ask for a determination letter from the IRS to prove status). Similarly, a library can hold the rooms open for local “community groups” – if a library chose to do this a form explaining that the group is local could be included in the policy. * A library might want to indicate that use of its space is not