The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on whether the First Amendment helps or hurts public officials who use their personal Facebook pages to communicate with voters and sometimes block their critics.

The judges heard an appeal from two San Diego-area school board members charged with violating the right to free speech.

fa parents. The board members had blocked the parent, Christopher Garnier, from their Facebook and Twitter accounts, saying he said Christopher Garnier had posted dozens of repeated comments on their personal Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Federal courts in California sided with Garnier, ruling that the First Amendment prohibited officials from expelling their critics if the board members used their personal pages for public business.

Three years ago, President Trump suffered a similar defeat when federal courts in New York ruled that he had violated the First Amendment by denying his critics access to his Twitter account. The Supreme Court later rejected his appeal because he was no longer in office at the time.

The issue is now before the courts in the case of Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff, a school member of the Poway Unified School District, and TJ Zane, a former member who was also charged.

Their case was joined by a case by a city manager in Port Huron, Michigan, who won a ruling blocking an online critic.

The legal issue before the Supreme Court is whether government officials are “initiating state action” when they use their personal pages to communicate with the public.

The 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco ruled that the school board members took official action and were bound by the 1st Amendment. They invested their pages with the authority of their offices and used their pages to communicate about their official duties, Judge Marsha Berzon said.

The board members appealed, urging the justices to overturn the 9th Circuits ruling, which sets the law for public officials throughout California and the western states.

They argued that they expressed their personal opinions on social media, and that their Facebook or Twitter accounts did not speak for the school district.

“A ruling in Garnier’s favor will have the unintended consequence of curtailing speech as government officials’ social media pages become inundated with harassment, trolling and hate speech, which officials will be powerless to filter,” they said.

In the Michigan case, by contrast, the 6th Circuit Court ruled that the city manager’s Facebook page was his personal account and not part of his job or official duties.

Normally the First Amendment protects the rights of writers or speakers, but in cases like this it can give others the right to respond to the speaker.

The two cases heard Tuesday present the first of three disputes before the Supreme Court over how the First Amendment applies to social media.

The justices will also rule on whether states like Texas and Florida violate the First Amendment when they punish school media platforms for allegedly discriminating against conservatives. They will also decide whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by pressuring Facebook and other platforms to remove “misinformation” about COVID-19 and vaccines.