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Judges can be Facebook friends with lawyers who appear before them, a state appeals court in Miami ruled, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Yesterday’s decision was the latest pronouncement on the propriety of social media relationships between litigants and the bench. The boundaries of virtual “friendships” have divided the legal world as more judges have created public profiles and are engaging with others online. In 2013, the American Bar Association cautioned judges about their use of social media. In code-of-conduct guidelines, the association said that while social media can help judges keep connected to the wider world, they should think twice before “friending,” “liking,” or “following” somebody. A three-judge panel of Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal said a Facebook friendship in itself isn’t grounds for recusal. That is because the act of “friending” someone these days says little about the closeness of the Facebook users in real life. “Because a ’friend’ on a social networking website is not necessarily a friend in the traditional sense of the word, we hold that the mere fact that a judge is a Facebook ’friend’ with a lawyer... does not provide a basis for a well-grounded fear that the judge cannot be impartial,” wrote Judge Thomas W. Logue, who wrote the opinion.