WASHINGTON (NEWSnet/AP) — U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that public officials sometimes may be sued for blocking critics on social media.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the court, said  officials who use personal accounts to make official statements may not be free to delete comments about those statements or block critics.

On the other hand, Barrett wrote, “State officials have private lives and their own constitutional rights.”

The court ruled in two cases involving lawsuits filed by people whose accounts were blocked after posting critical comments on social media accounts belonging to school board members in Southern California and a city manager in Port Huron, Michigan.

They are similar to a case involving Donald Trump and his decision to block critics from his personal account on the former-Twitter. Justices dismissed that case.

The cases forced the court to deal with the competing free speech rights of public officials and their constituents. They are among five social media cases on the court’s docket this term.

Appeals courts in San Francisco and Cincinnati had reached conflicting decisions about when personal accounts become official, and the high court did not embrace either ruling, returning the cases to the appeals courts to apply the standard the justices summarized Friday.

“When a government official posts about job-related topics on social media, it can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private,” Barrett said.

Officials must have the authority to speak on behalf of their governments and intend to use it for their posts to be regarded essentially as the government’s, Barrett wrote. In such cases, they must allow criticism, or risk a lawsuit, she wrote.

The cases decided Friday are O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, 22-324, and Lindke v. Freed, 22-611.

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