AURORA | A Thornton City Council member is drawing ire from anti-fracking activists after she blocked two proponents from her official Facebook page last week.
Today, a federal judge ordered Councilwoman Jan Kulmann, who works for Noble Energy, to unblock activists Eddie Asher and Cliff Willmeng from her city council person Facebook page.
The two had left criticisms on one of Kulmann’s posts, imploring voters to reject Prop. 112, which would implement larger setbacks between structures and some protected areas and oil development. Kulmann hid their comments from view before blocking them from her page.
Willmeng is also a candidate for Boulder County commissioner.
The activists then sued Kulmann, arguing that the Facebook page in question – which appears to be her official, government page, not linked to her personal page – entitled them to free speech rights.
The lawsuit is the latest in a tiff between Kulmann, an oil and gas industry employee and advocate, and anti-frackers who tried unsuccessfully to recall her from city council in 2016.
Lawyer Andrew McNulty of Killmer, Lane, and Newman, which is representing the activists, called Kulmann’s ban censorship and likened it to Chinese and North Korean controls on the internet.
“The government was using its power to censor speech, to skew the debate,” McNulty said. “This is basically propaganda.”
And so the legal battle has begun.
“This case is a complete publicity stunt for the two plaintiffs,” retorted Stan Garnett, a lawyer from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, who is representing Kulmann.
Garnett said there was no need to file a suit and that a phone call to Kulmann would have cleared up the issue. However, he argued that she was within her rights to ban them from the Facebook page, and said the case would proceed in the U.S. District Court.
The question is whether the Facebook page was her official, government page. If so, the activists are entitled to comment in the hopes of winning votes on Prop. 112.
Kulmann banned Willmeng and Asher from a robust debate on Prop. 112. On the post, comments are divided more or less between supporters and critics. Many more recent comments are concerned with the absence of the two activists or anger that their posts were hidden.
Hearings will likely begin in early November, Garnett said. After Election Day on November 6, Prop. 112 will be either the new reality or history.