Colorado Politics

Senate leaders say Ray Scott violated no rules by blocking critics on social media

Ray Scott won’t face an ethics rebuke from his fellow senators, after Republican and Democratic leadership said his social media accounts are his business.

Scott, a Republican from Grand Junction, received complaints from three Grand Valley residents because he blocked them from posting on his social media accounts, including Facebook, Charles Ashby of the Grand Junction Sentinel reported.

Senate President Kevin Grantham, R-Canon City, Senate Majority Leader Chris Holbert, R-Parker, and Senate Minority Leader Lucia Guzman, D-Denver, agreed there was no violation to investigate, since the Senate doesn’t have rules regarding social media, Ashby reporter after an interview with Grantham.

Anne Landman, Claudette Konola and Martin Wiesiolek alleged they were denied free speech because they were blocked by Scott, which they further alleged was official misconduct of his legislative duties. (Disclosure: This reporter has blocked or muted at least a dozen people for various reasons, including compulsive tweeting at me, profane insults, conspiracy theories and stuff stranger than that. Forgive me, Founding Fathers.)

“Senate Republicans and Democrats agreed this was a frivolous attempt to taint our ability to control inappropriate comments on our personal social media sites,” Scott told Colorado Politics Friday morning. “Trolls trying to smear someone they don’t like personally or for our political views hopefully will move on to other adventures.”

Ashby wrote that the three cite the Virginia court case of Davison v. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. In July U.S. District Judge James Cacheris ruled the board had violated the First Amendment rights of a blogger when the chairwoman blocked him from posting on her Facebook page.

Read Ashby’s story here.

Ray Scott

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