Did David Robinson Violate the First Amendment?
Harassing volunteers. Threatening consultants. And now violating the Constitution?
It’s always been very clear that if you disagree with King David Robinson, he will try and silence you any way he can. But today he’s taken it to a new level. Resident-centered, this is not!
A pic of Robinson’s post on 6/13
Of course, private citizens have a right to control their social media. But I’d encourage everyone to read this link from the Ohio Electronic Records Committee. It explains a recent Supreme Court decision, Lindke v. Freed, 601 U.S. ___ (2024), in which the Court laid forth a test to determine whether a public official can delete a social media comment without violating the First Amendment’s protections against free speech. I won’t get deep into the legal analysis here but suffice to say – I certainly believe he’s run afoul of the First Amendment. At this point, I’ll be contacting the City on Monday to ask them about next steps to ensure this mishap does not happen again.
Let’s talk about what this *means*, though. It means that once again, when someone disagrees with King David Robinson, rather than have a policy discussion in public, he will do anything he can to silence, undermine, or discredit his opponent. Is this the leadership Worthington wants? Leadership that disparages volunteers to our many City committees? Leadership that makes thinly veiled threats to taxpayer-paid consultants, attempting to ensure they do what Robinson wants, and not follow the will of the community? Leadership that passes PAC-written legislation under cover of night, without notice to the community or opportunity for broad public input?
I draw this to everyone’s attention because I don’t think this is what we as a community want. It isn’t fun and I’d rather be posting about the wonderful dogs we walked last week at the Franklin County Dog Shelter. But I care about this community too damn much to not ensure this news gets broadcast.
Councilman Robinson is running for re-election this November. He clearly does not believe in our democratic process, or that he is subject to the same laws as other elected officials. I hope we remember how much we dislike kings when we vote on November 4th.
Something crazy happened this past week while I was in Chicago.
It looks like one of our elected leaders broke the law. But it isn’t just any law, it’s the First Amendment!
Councilman David Robinson recently made a post on his Facebook page, here. The astute among you may notice there’s no comments on that post. Earlier this week, I made a comment on that post, noting that a few weeks ago I predicted that exactly this sort of business would happen, because it was always obvious the NIMBY crew in Worthington would be attempting to undermine the Comprehensive Plan. They know at this point they’re the minority in our community, and the only way they can stop progress is to confuse our residents and threaten our consultants. Pictures of the Facebook post are off to the left (or below, or right, or somewhere, I have no idea how websites work and render on mobile vs. desktop).
Now it’s gone!
The same post, on 6-10