Judge rules social media user not entitled to anonymity

A social media platform can be compelled to divulge account information belonging to a woman who anonymously chatted online about plans for last summer’s deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., a federal magistrate judge ruled Monday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero’s order says the woman’s First Amendment rights to anonymous speech don’t outweigh the importance of disclosing her identity to plaintiffs’ attorneys suing over the rally’s violence. Leaked Discord messages indicate the woman likely was involved in planning the event last August, the magistrate said.

San Francisco-based Discord, a text and voice chat app, is popular with video game players, but also has been used by far-right extremists, including organizers of the Charlottesville rally.

The woman’s attorneys had asked the San Francisco-based magistrate to quash a subpoena for Discord to turn over her account information and content of her communications to the lawyers, who are suing organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally last August.

At the rally last summer, hundreds traveled to Charlottesville to protest the city’s plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park named after the Confederate general.

Sunday is the anniversary of the deadly rally in Charlottesville, where white supremacists and counterprotesters clashed before a car plowed into a crowd, killing 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer.

Spero noted that the woman’s personally identifying information can remain “highly confidential” and kept from plaintiffs’ lawyers, under a protective order issued in the Virginia lawsuit.

Lawyers for the user argued the subpoena is designed to expose the identities of people with “unpopular political views.”