The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (popularly known as Chamber IV) rejected an amparo appeal filed against Deputy Roberto Thompson Chacón (PLN-Alajuela) for blocking a user of that network on his Twitter profile.
By vote 2021-4841 of the previous March 9, of which Delfino.cr has a copy, the unanimity of the Chamber rejected a claim presented by a user who stated that on December 24, 2020, Deputy Thompson blocked him, after he responded to a comment regarding the start of the vaccination against COVID-19.
The complainant told the magistrates that Thompson blocked him from his official deputy account and that this constituted an act of abuse of authority, since he is a public official and uses the account @rothocha to disseminate his work as a legislator, in addition to the fact that it is linked to the Congress web portal as a communication mechanism for it with citizens.
Thompson defended himself stating that he opened his Twitter account before being a deputy and that it is not an institutional account assigned as a congressman to disseminate content associated with his work, since the electronic means through which he can be located is email assigned by the Legislative Assembly itself.
The magistrates rejected the amparo by accepting the legislator’s argument that his Twitter account is not institutional.
Said performance [el bloqueo] does not infringe the fundamental rights of the appellant, because the appellant’s Twitter account is not an institutional account designed exclusively to inform about his management as a deputy of the Republic, but where he also externalizes his personal tastes (about food, sports, etc. )
The Chamber recalled that Thompson had previously been denounced before that Court for blocking a user, only that on that occasion it was on Facebook, and it was determined at the time that “The owner of one account or another may decide to opt for the blocking of an account in particular when he loses interest in continuing to maintain contact with it, for reasons that are beyond the control of constitutionality and that, rather, are typical of private subjects in use of their personal attributions and of the facilities that, in that sense, the technology offers them “.
The Court affirmed that this seat cannot act as a comptroller of the personal interest that one of the parties may have in continuing to maintain contact with the other, since this is reduced to the private sphere of both. Likewise, the Chamber said that it is not a legal controller and therefore it is not up to it to review whether or not the disputed actions conform to the terms of use accepted by the complainant or the accused. or the current legal regulations, since that is a task typical of the common road.
To conclude that the deputy’s Twitter account is not in the name of any public entity and that it is personal, the Chamber declared the appeal no place.
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