The US supreme court on Friday threw out a pair of judicial decisions relating to whether public officials can block critics on social media without violating constitutional protections for free speech.

The justices vacated rulings by lower courts in two cases – one from California and another from Michigan – involving lawsuits brought under the US constitution’s first amendment by people who were blocked after posting criticisms on the social media accounts of local officials. The justices directed the lower courts to reconsider the matter.

At issue in the legal fight was whether the officials, in blocking their critics, were acting in a governmental capacity. The first amendment’s protections for free speech generally constrain government actors, not private individuals.

Blocking users is a function often employed on social media to stifle critics. The supreme court previously confronted the issue in 2021 in litigation over former president Donald Trump’s effort to block critics on X, then called Twitter, but failed to decide the matter by deeming the case moot after he left office.

The first of the latest cases involved two public school board trustees from Poway, California, who appealed a lower court’s ruling in favor of parents who sued them after being blocked from the accounts of the officials on social media.

The second case involved a Michigan man’s appeal after a lower court ruled against his lawsuit challenging a Port Huron city official who blocked him on Facebook.

Joe Biden’s administration had sided with the officials in both cases. Free speech advocacy groups urged the justices to back the plaintiffs.

The California case involved Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff and TJ Zane, elected trustees of the Poway unified school district. They blocked Christopher and Kimberly Garnier, the parents of three students, after the couple made hundreds of critical posts on issues including race and school finances.

Zane and O’Connor-Ratcliff both had public Facebook pages identifying them as government officials. The parents sued O’Connor-Ratcliff and Zane in 2017, arguing that their free speech rights under the first amendment were violated.

A federal judge in California ruled that the parents’ first amendment rights were violated and the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals agreed.

In the Michigan case, Port Huron resident Kevin Lindke sued in 2020 after city manager James Freed blocked him from his public Facebook page following critical posts related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Lindke accused Freed of violating his first amendment rights. Freed’s account also was a public Facebook page identifying him as a public figure.

A federal judge ruled in favor of Freed in 2021 and the Cincinnati-based sixth US circuit court of appeals last year agreed and Freed’s blocking of Lindke did not constitute an official act.