A federal court in California dismissed a pro se attorney’s Section 1983 lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco, a San Francisco supervisor, and X Corp., holding that the supervisor’s decision to disable comments on her personal X account was not state action and therefore could not support a First Amendment claim.
Plaintiff, an attorney who unsuccessfully ran for San Francisco supervisor in 2024, sued after a newly elected supervisor disabled comments on an X post about San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy, blocking plaintiff and the rest of the public from commenting. When plaintiff complained to X, an employee determined her account was “inauthentic” and suspended it. Plaintiff brought three counts under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging First Amendment violations by the supervisor and X, plus a Monell claim against the City. (A Monell claim allows a plaintiff to hold a municipality liable under Section 1983 when an official policy or custom of the municipality causes a constitutional violation.)
What each side asked for
The City and the supervisor asked the court to dismiss for failure to state a claim, asserting qualified immunity in the alternative. X asked the court to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and failure to state a claim, and separately moved to sever and transfer the claims against it to the Northern District of Texas under a forum-selection clause in its Terms of Service. Plaintiff opposed all of the motions.
The court granted both motions to dismiss without leave to amend, and denied X’s motion to transfer as moot.
No state action by the supervisor
The heart of the decision was the court’s application of Lindke v. Freed, a 2024 Supreme Court decision which requires a plaintiff to show that a public official (1) had actual authority to speak for the State, and (2) purported to exercise that authority in the relevant speech.
On the first prong, no source of law gave the supervisor authority to speak for the City through her X account. The San Francisco Charter requires the Board of Supervisors to act through ordinances or resolutions and assigns publication responsibilities to an appointed Clerk. The Brown Act and Sunshine Ordinance govern the legislative body, not individual legislators, and the Sunshine Ordinance expressly preserves a supervisor’s right to comment publicly as a private citizen. The court also rejected plaintiff’s argument that the City had a longstanding custom of allowing supervisors to speak officially through private social media, noting that the Board maintains its own official X account.
On the second prong, the supervisor did not purport to exercise state authority. The information she posted was already available through the Board’s public meeting minutes, the post had no immediate legal effect, and the account bore no official labels — the handle was “@JackieFielder_” rather than something tied to her office, and she had used the account for years before taking office to express personal political views.
No state action means no claim against X
Because the supervisor’s conduct was not state action, plaintiff’s joint-action theory against X collapsed. A private platform can only jointly participate in state action if there is state action to participate in. The Monell claim against the City failed for the same reason, since there was no underlying constitutional violation.
Chau v. X Corp., No. 25-cv-10592-EMC, 2026 WL 1303058 (N.D. Cal. May 12, 2026)