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The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana has filed a federal lawsuit against the sheriff in Henry County, alleging he violated a man’s First Amendment rights by deleting his comment on Facebook and then blocking him.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Henry County Sheriff John Sproles posted an excerpt from a video made by the plaintiff, Kristopher Bilbrey, to his official Facebook page.
Bilbrey, a political commentator who hosts or co-hosts podcasts, commented to express concern that the video was republished without attribution and that it was apparently being used to support a position that the video itself didn’t support.
According to the complaint, Sproles deleted the comment within an hour and then blocked Bilbrey from the page.
That action, the lawsuit says, violated Bilbrey’s rights to engage in expressive activity and receive information.
According to the complaint, Bilbrey hosts a weekly podcast, along with a podcast that airs five nights a week. Both stream on the same YouTube channel, which has about 16,700 subscribers.
The lawsuit says Sproles’ Facebook page was originally created as a page for political candidates. Then, the day before he took office, he changed the name from “John Sproles for Henry County Sheriff” to “John M. Sproles, Henry County Sheriff.”
Further, the lawsuit says Sproles has used the page to post information about law enforcement activities and programs in Henry County, along with policy initiatives and other matters — which effectively makes the page an official government page, as opposed to a campaign page.
A search for the page on Facebook now shows it is once again called “John M. Sproles for Henry County Sheriff.”
Additionally, the page is listed as “Political Candidate,” and an intro reads: “This is not an official government page. I am speaking as a private individual”
That language, the complaint says, appeared sometime after Bilbrey was blocked.
“Notwithstanding this language, which was not present at the time that Mr. Bilbrey’s comment was deleted from the page or the time that Mr. Bilbrey was blocked from the page altogether, the page remains very much an official government page and anyone viewing the page would understand that Sheriff Sproles was posting to the page in his capacity as Henry County Sheriff,” the complaint says.
Indiana Lawyer has reached out to the Henry County Sheriff’s Office for comment. Court records do not list counsel for Sproles.
The case is Kristopher Bilbrey v. John M. Sproles, in his official capacity as Sheriff of Henry County, Indiana, 1:23-cv-01259.
The lawsuit is the latest in a trend of cases against government agencies and politicians over social media use. It’s common for such lawsuits to settle relatively quickly.
It’s also common for these lawsuits to be aimed at smaller communities. Henry County had an estimated population of close to 49,000 people in 2022, according to census data.
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