Downtown Omaha tenant accuses Mayor John Ewing Jr. of violating her First Amendment rights
By Bill Schammert, Maddie Augustine
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OMAHA, Nebraska (KETV) — An Omaha woman is suing Mayor John Ewing Jr. over an alleged deleted social media comment.
According to the lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Nebraska, Lisa Kilker lives in the Regis Condominium Building on 16th Street in Omaha, near a sinkhole that has existed since January 2025.
On Oct. 10, on Ewing’s professional Facebook page, she wrote, “The Regis building residents have just had to take out a $1 million dollar loan to pay for repairs for the sinkhole. You ran a campaign on promising to help us. What happened to these promises??”
The lawsuit alleges that the comment was deleted and Kilker was then blocked from the mayor’s professional Facebook page.
According to the lawsuit, “By maintaining an interactive social media page devoted to official City business, Defendant created and administered a digital space in which citizens could speak directly to their elected official regarding matters of public concern.”
It goes on to say, “By blocking Plaintiff from the page because she criticized his official conduct, Defendant acted under color of state law to engage in viewpoint-based discrimination, violating the First Amendment.”
The lawsuit also includes an image of Kilker and Ewing on May 3, 2025, when he was campaigning to become Omaha’s mayor and showed support for fixing the sinkhole.
The lawsuit seeks the restoration of Kilker’s access to the Facebook page and to ban other “viewpoint-based” blocking from social media accounts. It also requests damages to be determined by a jury and attorneys fees.
No hearing dates have been set yet.
“The City of Omaha has received and reviewed a lawsuit filed in federal court regarding Facebook use. We will respond to the lawsuit accordingly,” City Attorney Matt Kuhse said in a statement.
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