Breaking: Supreme Court Revives Lawsuit of Citizen Journalist Arrested for Asking a Question
The Supreme Court agreed to review Priscilla Villarreal’s case, vacated the Fifth Circuit’s 9-7 decision against her, and sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit.
“I’m grateful for the Supreme Court’s decision,” said Priscilla. “It has been a challenging seven years since Laredo officials attempted to silence me, and this marks a significant step toward rectifying the wrongs I have faced.”
In 2017, Texas police dusted off a decades-old statute local officials had never used before to criminalize Priscilla’s journalism. The alleged crime? She asked a Laredo police officer to confirm facts about a high-profile suicide and a fatal car accident, facts the officer freely shared and Villarreal published to her hundreds of thousands of readers.
Priscilla, described by The New York Times as “arguably the most influential journalist in Laredo,” covers local crime, traffic, and other news for her 200,000 Facebook followers. Like all good journalists, she’s not shy about criticizing government officials. That’s why she’s been repeatedly targeted by them. The district attorney even took her behind closed doors to chastise her for her reporting.
But asking government officials questions is no crime. It’s something reporters do every day — and is something the First Amendment squarely protects. So Priscilla sued the police and prosecutors who engineered her arrest for violations of her First and Fourth Amendment rights.
Still, the district court dismissed her claims, finding the officials were immune from Priscilla’s lawsuit. She appealed, and a panel on the Fifth Circuit ruled in her favor, reversing the dismissal and concluding that if Villarreal’s arrest “is not an obvious violation of the Constitution, it’s hard to imagine what would be.” But the entire Fifth Circuit decided to reconsider the ruling, and in a 9-7 decision, tossed out her lawsuit, leaving the Supreme Court as Priscilla’s only avenue to justice.
Source: https://www.thefire.org/news/breaking-supreme-court-revives-lawsuit-citizen-journalist-arrested-asking-question
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