Irvine Council Member Treseder Blocks Residents from X.com Account; Will She Suffer Christina Shea’s Fate?

Social media makes it easy to interact with electeds; and many electeds somtimes fail to separate their feeds tied to their elected office from their personal pages/feeds/accounts.

NextDoor was buzzing with a screen grab that Irvine Council member Dr. Kathleen Treseder blocked a resident from her X.com account. Screen Grab is above. And you can probably already guess, an elected official can’t do that on their official page. TheNextDoor user who posted only offers her first name and an initial for her last.

Dr. Treseder may learn the lesson of former Irvine Mayor and City Council member Christina Shea and it could cost Irvine Taxpayers significant taxpayer dollars.

To recap: in 2020, while serving as Mayor of Irvine, Shea faced significant controversy and a federal lawsuit over blocking residents from her personal Facebook page. The incident occurred amid nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Shea posted content on her Facebook page criticizing aspects of the protests and BLM. Several Irvine residents responded with comments supporting BLM, calling for police accountability, or criticizing her stance (e.g., one resident, Nikka Aminmadani, posted about systemic racism and urged respect for Black Americans).

Shea –or her staff– deleted multiple comments and she admitted to removing roughly 15-20 herself and blocked several users. Those blocked were Irvine residents relying on her page for official city updates and policy discussions. This was viewed by many as viewpoint-based censorship on what functioned as a public forum for government-related communication.

In June 2020, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sent a letter to Shea demanding she stop blocking critics and deleting comments based on viewpoints, citing recent court rulings (e.g., from the Second and Fourth Circuits) that public officials violate the First Amendment when they block people from official social media accounts used for government business.
In July 2020, Irvine resident Lamar West filed a federal lawsuit (West v. Shea) alleging that Shea’s actions violated his First Amendment rights. West claimed he was blocked after commenting on police brutality discussions, and that her page served as a public forum for constituent engagement.
A federal judge denied Shea’s motion to dismiss in November 2020, ruling that West had plausibly alleged her profile operated as a public forum.
The city of Irvine settled the lawsuit in late 2020/early 2021. Taxpayers paid $120,000 to resolve it. Shea maintained her actions were justified, due to alleged threats or harassment in some comments, but the settlement avoided a full trial.

This case highlighted ongoing debates about public officials’ social media use: when personal accounts become “designated public forums” for official purposes, viewpoint-based blocking can trigger First Amendment violations. No similar high-profile incidents appear tied to Shea on other platforms like X/Twitter, and this was specifically on Facebook during her time as mayor (she later served as a council member).

In the case of Dr. Treseder, the NextDoor user goes by an incomplete full name and is a fierce critic of the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) of which Treseder is a champion. The correct and fastest thing for Treseder to do is unblock the reader, apologize, or work with the city manager and city attorney on getting that settlement check ready. Because if the city had to pay $120K just six years ago, how much $$$ makes it right?