Gerald Weber (Photo: John Disney/ALM)

A former Cobb County sheriff's  investigator is suing Sheriff Neil Warren for blocking him from the office's official Facebook page.

James "Jimmy" Herndon, who announced last summer that he will challenge Warren for sheriff in 2020, said in a federal First Amendment lawsuit filed Wednesday that he was blocked from the Cobb County Sheriff's Office Facebook page because he posted comments critical of Warren.  Herndon left the department in 2017.

The suit also names as defendants Lt. Col. Robert Quigley and Deputy Glenn Daniel, both of whom are public information officers for the office.

The suit asks a federal judge to declare Warren's "viewpoint-based censorship" as unconstitutional, bar the sheriff from continuing to delete or block Herndon's comments on the official Facebook page and restore his posting privileges.

"Public officials can't silence critics, period, whether they speak in a park or on a government's social media," said Herndon's attorney Gerry Weber.

Herndon's claims are virtually identical to issues raised in lawsuits against President Donald Trump and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, after they blocked would-be followers from their Twitter feeds. Last July, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that called the president's action of blocking critics on Twitter an unconstitutional affront to the First Amendment.

The appeals court concluded Trump's Twitter account is a public forum that he uses to deliver official news.

On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez issued a public apology for blocking a former elected official from Brooklyn critical of her on Twitter. The apology was issued as a condition of settling the lawsuit accusing her of curtailing his First Amendment rights.

Herndon's suit similarly contends that the Cobb County Sheriff's Office Facebook page is a "designated public forum" and that Herndon has become "a vocal opponent" of Warren, routinely commenting along with other members of the public on the office's Facebook page.

The lawsuit also contends that Warren has deleted comments critical of him posted by other county residents and former employees, in addition to Herndon, a 16-year veteran of the office.

According to the suit, when the ACLU of Georgia sent a letter to Warren last February demanding that he stop censoring Herndon, Warren then blocked Herndon from any access to the sheriff's Facebook page in retaliation for "engaging in constitutionally protected free speech opposing Warren."

The suit claims that social media pages or feeds established by government agencies or public officials is subject to the same First Amendment protections as any other speech and that, by blocking or deleting Herndon's comments, the defendants "have both directly and implicitly chilled" Herndon's constitutional right to free expression.

Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that Jimmy Herndon is no longer with the sheriff's office.