Poway resident files lawsuit against city alleging First Amendment rights violation

San Diego Union-Tribune

By Julie Gallant

November 3, 2026

Poway resident Ray Jalisi filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Poway on Oct. 16, alleging the city violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by hiding comments critical of the city on its Facebook page.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in downtown San Diego.

Alex Coolman, Jalisi’s lawyer with the Law Office of Alex Coolman, said Jalisi has frequently been critical of aspects of Poway’s city government. Jalisi’s suit states that in at least four instances since July, Poway’s official Facebook page, facebook.com/cityofpoway has hidden his comments expressing concern about aspects of city government. The comments remain visible to Jalisi’s account, but are invisible to all other users, giving Jalisi the illusion of participating in public discourse while actually silencing him, allege Jalisi and Coolman.

In the complaint, the plaintiff requests a jury trial in this action.

“He’s filing the suit because it appears the city has selectively chosen to keep his comments hidden,” Coolman said on Oct. 28. “The story from the city is that they have an auto moderation setting turned on on the Facebook page and that caused the comments to get flagged or hidden automatically by Facebook.”

In an Oct. 28 press release, the city of Poway asserts that comments posted by Jalisi on the city’s Facebook page were not visible to the public because the city uses Facebook’s Moderation Assist, in which page administrators are allowed to select criteria, offered by Meta, to reduce spam from “bots.”

In other words, the city claims Jalisi’s comments were hidden because Moderation Assist flagged him as a bot.

Moderation Assist will automatically hide a post if (1) the commentator does not have any friends or followers, (2) the comment has a link or (3) the commenter does not have a profile picture, states a U.S. District Court Southern District of California order, which grants in part and denies in part a motion for a temporary restraining order.

“Plaintiff does not have a profile picture, has only one Facebook friend, and has no posts on his own profile, which ‘are typically strong indicators that the account is a non-human bot,’” states the order.

Jalisi said he uses LinkedIn for most of his professional interactions and has numerous friends and colleagues on that account. He said even though he has few friends and no profile picture on his Facebook account, it hasn’t been a problem with other Facebook groups he participates in. He also said he has privacy issues with Facebook, but does use it for his personal online browsing.

Jalisi, a 14-year Poway resident who lived in Rancho Bernardo for eight years prior, alleges Poway is engaging in viewpoint-based discrimination on its Facebook page in violation of the First Amendment. Neither the Constitution nor the city’s own social media policy allow for this kind of “surreptitious concealing of opinions that the city would prefer to disregard,” Coolman said.

“This lawsuit is not monetary, not even a single dime comes to us,” Jalisi said. “This is about standing up for our First Amendment rights period.”

According to a court order, the city’s social media policy provides that “the city’s social media presence serves as a limited public forum and all content shall be monitored and moderated.” The policy indicates that user-generated posts will be deleted if those posts, among other things, “use abusive, vulgar, offensive, profane, sexual, threatening, deliberately untruthful or defamatory language or content.” Additionally, “postings from a public user account which contain inappropriate or disruptive content, or believed to be spam may result in the public user account being blocked from any further activity on the city’s social media account … at the discretion of the city manager’s office.”

In a declaration to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California made by Rene Carmichael, the city of Poway’s community outreach coordinator, in defense of the city, Carmichael stated that she manages the city’s social media pages, including its Facebook page. She states she drafts the city posts and responds to comments seeking information from the city.

“I do not regularly monitor comments on city Facebook posts in real time, especially because many come in outside of business hours,” Carmichael stated. “I have never manually hidden, removed or otherwise modified any comments or other posts on the city’s Facebook page made by the Plaintiff, Mr. Reza Ray Jalisi, nor has anyone else at the city.

“If the city were to manually hide a post on its Facebook page, the commenter would be notified that the comment was removed for violating the city’s terms and conditions and why,” the declaration states. “The city has never hidden or removed a comment from its Facebook page based on its content. The city has never, and would never, remove a comment from its Facebook post for being negative or critical. There are currently a number of comments publicly viewable on its Facebook page that are critical of the city council, the city, or otherwise negative.”

Jalisi alleges the hidden comments are civil questions and remarks about city business. In an attempted comment on an Oct. 6 post, Jalisi wrote, “Can the city provide real examples of how the taxpayers of Poway are involved in development decisions and their voice and feedback is actually utilized to influence decisions?” This comment, which is visible to Jalisi’s account, was hidden from public view, Jalisi and his attorney allege.

A follow-up comment from Jalisi, in which he asked whether he personally was being blocked, was also hidden from public view, they allege. On the other hand, Jalisi’s comment on the same post asking about whether it was possible to call into the meeting was published, and the city responded to it, they said.

Similarly, Jalisi attempted to comment on an Oct. 9 post related to storm preparedness, stating, “Hopefully the massive man-made hill the (Mayor) Vaus refers to as the Matterhorn in the Farm doesn’t get washed out by the storm.” Jalisi alleges the city blocked this comment from public view, though it appears to be visible from Jalisi’s own account.

Jalisi also alleges the city allowed other comments that were very similar or in some cases identical to Jalisi’s to be published on the same Facebook posts.

“The strong implication of this pattern of behavior is that the city is singling out Jalisi’s social media activity based on his status as a critic of the city, a practice that has been found to be unconstitutional in other cases,” Coolman said in a press release.

Jalisi’s lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order blocking Poway from engaging in “shadow banning”, an injunction and unspecified damages.

But the city states in a press release that the temporary restraining order filed by Jalisi was partially denied on Oct. 22 with the court finding a violation of the First Amendment appeared unlikely. It was only granted in part because the city did not oppose the majority of the request because it never manually hid comments on its social media, the press release states.

“Although Mr. Jalisi contended the city was hiding his comments to suppress his critical viewpoints, the judge’s ruling stated that the city’s use of Moderation Assist runs counter to the suppression of free expression; it seeks to ensure that residents have effective access to the exchange of ideas with their neighbors and government,” the news release states. “Notably, many other comments critical of the city are not hidden on the city’s Facebook page.”

Jalisi said some of his comments have recently been unblocked by the city in response to the temporary restraining order. He said some of his comments stem from frustration with the city for promising a certain type of development in the Poway Road Specific Plan, and then switched to something in his view that was less desirable.

“I’m not anti-development, I’m anti-corruption,” said Jalisi, noting that he wants to bring awareness to an alleged violation of constitutional rights of an individual. “We will get our rights and make sure our rights are not violated in the future.”

Coolman said the city has 21 days from the date of service on Oct. 22 to answer the complaint.

“We’ve asked for a trial and intend to push ahead,” he said.

Poway City Manager Chris Hazeltine said the city is appreciative of the “quick, thorough and favorable finding of the court,” which he said appears to validate (based on the record to date) that the city did nothing wrong.

“As public servants, we know we are vulnerable to public scrutiny and that’s OK,” Hazeltine said in a news release. “But calls for firings and resignations and personal attacks are unacceptable and inappropriate; especially when only one-sided story telling was presented.

“We’re not perfect and we never will be, but we do the right thing always, from a legal, moral and ethical perspective,” Hazeltine added. “I am so proud of our staff, and I am thrilled their honor was defended so quickly.”