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No Qualified Immunity When Government Official Allegedly Deleted Comments Based on Viewpoint

Eugene Volokh | 8.10.2026 8:01 AM

From Thursday's Schulte v. Leners, decided by Judge Frank Easterbrook, joined by Judges Doris Pryor and Joshua Kolar:

Elizabeth Schulte co-owns real property in Cedar Lake. The Town is governed by a three-member Board of Supervisors, of which Kenneth Leners served as chairman in September 2022. The Town maintains a website (townofcedarlake.org), which it uses to post things such as agendas, officials' contact information, and updates on pending business. According to Schulte's complaint, which we take as true at this stage, until September 2022 the website allowed members of the public to comment on the Town's posts. Members of the public often expressed their thoughts and opinions on the original post and discussed other issues. The Town did not limit who could comment or what they could say.

On September 13, 2022, Chairman Leners, who possessed editorial control of the website, posted a notice titled "Update on Recreational Residential Dwellings." The notice criticized the use of recreational vehicles in Cedar Lake and advocated greater regulation of RVs. Schulte—who owns an RV—disagreed and said so in the comment section. Others joined. Fifteen public comments addressed the substance of Leners's post; thirteen took issue with it.

A week later Leners posted a reply to Schulte, calling her message "disrespectful" and announcing that he'd "no longer allow [her] to comment on this site." Schulte answered in kind, disputing both Leners's views about RVs and his characterization of her posts. Leners promptly deleted her reply. He did the same to at least two other critics in the comment thread: label their comment disrespectful, announce a ban, and delete their posts.

On September 22, after threats of legal action, Leners removed all remaining comments from his post, again citing "disrespect[]." At an October 17 town meeting, Leners sought to justify his actions as a "judgment call" based on what he viewed as "derogatory comment[s]." The Board eventually voted to end comment sections altogether. The deleted comments from Leners's post were later restored to the site, but in a standalone thread unconnected to the original post. As of the date of Schulte's amended complaint, Leners's post of September 13 remained on the........

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