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Supreme Court tosses lower court decision that shielded officers who arrested Texas citizen journalist
Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday tossed out a lower court decision that shielded from liability Texas law enforcement officers who arrested a local citizen journalist after she sought information from a police source.
The case of journalist Priscilla Villarreal, who is known to her readers in Laredo, Texas, as “Lagordiloca,” pits the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press against the doctrine of qualified immunity, which provides legal protections for police and other government officials.
Villarreal’s challenge attracted interest from a range of reporters, major news organizations and journalism nonprofits who have argued that the right to seek information from public officials is fundamental to the practice of journalism.
In its brief order, the Supreme Court wiped away the lower court decision that protected the police officers involved in her arrest and ordered additional proceedings.
Villarreal has been described as the “most influential journalist” in Laredo, and publishes information about local crime, traffic and other news to her Facebook page, “Lagordiloca News.” Her reporting sometimes rankles local government officials, according to court papers, including the Laredo Police Department.
In 2017, their frustrations boiled over. Villarreal had published two news reports based on tips from local citizens, one that named a U.S. Border Patrol agent who died by suicide and a second relaying information about a fatal traffic crash and Houston family that was hurt in the accident. For both, she reached out to a Laredo police officer who confirmed the information before the stories were published to her Facebook page.
Months later, Villarreal was arrested for allegedly violating a state law that makes it a felony for a person to solicit or receive information from a government official that has not yet been made public if it’s with the intent to obtain a benefit.
In the 23 years that it’s been on the books, the statute has never been enforced, according to her lawyers.
Villarreal turned herself in, and the criminal charges were dismissed after a local judge ruled the law was unconstitutionally vague. She then sued the police and prosecutors behind her arrest, arguing her First, Fourth and 14th Amendment rights were violated.
The officials sought to toss out the case, claiming they had qualified immunity. The doctrine shields public officials from lawsuits stemming from conduct on the job unless they violate clearly established constitutional rights. A federal district court agreed, but the decision was reversed by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
“If the First Amendment means anything, it surely means that a citizen journalist has the right to ask a public official a question, without fear of being imprisoned,” Judge James Ho, appointed by former President Donald Trump, wrote for the judges. “Yet that is exactly what happened here: Priscilla Villarreal was put in jail for asking a police officer a question. If that is not an obvious violation of the Constitution, it’s hard to imagine what would be.”
But the full slate of judges from the 5th Circuit reheard Villarreal’s case and in January voted 9-7 to uphold the district court’s dismissal.
The divided 5th Circuit found that Laredo prosecutors and police have qualified immunity, concluding that they reasonably believed Villarreal broke state law when she asked an “unofficial” government source for information, instead of waiting for an official police report, and benefited from it. The nine judges also rejected the panel’s finding that Villarreal’s arrest violated the First Amendment.
Ho, in dissent, wrote the majority’s reasoning was “a recipe for public officials to combine forces with state or local legislators to do— whatever they want to do. It’s a level of blind deference and trust in government power our Founders would not recognize.”
In appealing the 5th Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court, Villarreal’s lawyers wrote in a filing that its long-standing precedent “leaves no doubt that arresting Villarreal for asking the government for information and publishing the response violated the First Amendment — and every reasonable official would have known that.”
They warned that leaving the 5th Circuit’s decision in place entitles law enforcement to qualified immunity for using state laws as justification for First Amendment violations.
“Without reversal, the chill from the decision below will only spread wider, as ever-growing criminal codes provide a grab bag of statutes officials can wield against disfavored speech,” Villarreal’s legal team warned.
But Texas officials, led by Attorney General Ken Paxton, argued that they reasonably believed that Villarreal was seeking to solicit a leak of nonpublic information for her benefit.
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France’s anti-terrorism court on Friday convicted eight people of involvement in the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty outside his school near Paris four years ago, a horrific death that shocked the country.
Paty, 47, was killed by an Islamic extremist outside his school on Oct. 16, 2020, days after showing his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a debate on free expression. The assailant, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, was shot to death by police.
Those who have been on trial on terrorism charges at a special court in Paris since the end of November were accused, in some cases, of providing assistance to the perpetrator and, in others, of organizing a hate campaign online before the murder took place.
STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
The 540-seat courtroom was packed for the verdict, which marked the final chapter of the Paty trial. Heavy surveillance was in place, with more than 50 police officers guarding the proceedings.
Seated in the front row was Paty’s 9-year-old son, accompanied by family members. As the lead judge, Franck Zientara, delivered sentences one after the other, emotions in the room ran high.
“I am moved, and I am relieved,” said Gaëlle Paty, Samuel Paty’s sister, as she addressed a crowd of reporters after the verdict. “Hearing the word ‘guilty’ — that’s what I needed.”
“I spent this week listening to a lot of rewriting of what happened, and it was hard to hear, but now the judge has stated what really happened, and it feels good,” she added, her voice breaking as tears filled her eyes.
Families of the accused reacted with gasps, cries, shouts, and ironic clapping, prompting the judge to pause multiple times and call for silence.
“They lied about my brother,” shouted one relative. Another woman, sobbing, exclaimed, “They took my baby from me,” before being escorted out by police officers.
The seven-judge panel met or went above most of the terms requested by prosecutors, citing “the exceptional gravity of the facts.”
Naïm Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, friends of the attacker, were convicted of complicity in murder and sentenced to 16 years in prison each. Neither can be paroled for two thirds of their term, about 10 years. Boudaoud was accused of driving the attacker to the school, while Epsirkhanov helped him procure weapons.
Brahim Chnina, 52, the Muslim father of the schoolgirl whose lies sparked the events leading to Paty’s death, was sentenced to 13 years for association with a terrorist enterprise. Prosecutors had sought 10 years for him.
Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a Muslim preacher, was given 15 years for organizing a hate campaign online against Paty.
The shocking death of the 47-year-old teacher left an indelible mark on France, with several schools now named after him.
The trial had begun in late November. The defendants were accused of assisting a perpetrator or organizing a hate campaign online in lead-up to the murder.
At the time of the attack, there were protests in many Muslim countries and calls online for violence targeting France and the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The newspaper had republished its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad a few weeks before Paty’s death to mark the opening of the trial over deadly 2015 attacks on its newsroom by Islamic extremists.
The cartoon images deeply offended many Muslims, who saw them as sacrilegious. But the fallout from Paty’s killing reinforced the French state’s commitment to freedom of expression and its firm attachment to secularism in public life.
Chnina’s daughter, who was 13 at the time, claimed that she had been excluded from Paty’s class when he showed the caricatures on Oct. 5, 2020.
Chnina sent a series of messages to his contacts denouncing Paty, saying that “this sick man” needed to be fired, along with the address of the school in the Paris suburb of Conflans Saint-Honorine. In reality, Chnina’s daughter had lied to him and had never attended the lesson in question.
Paty was teaching a class mandated by the National Education Ministry on freedom of expression. He discussed the caricatures in this context, saying students who did not wish to see them could temporarily leave the classroom.
An online campaign against Paty snowballed, and 11 days after the lesson, Anzorov attacked the teacher with a knife as he walked home, and displayed the teacher’s head in a post on social media. Police later fatally shot Anzorov as he advanced toward them, armed.
Chnina’s daughter was tried last year in a juvenile court and given an 18-month suspended sentence. Four other students at Paty’s school were found guilty of involvement and given suspended sentences; a fifth, who pointed out Paty to Anzorov in exchange for money, was given a 6-month term with an electronic bracelet.
Sefrioui, the preacher on trial, had presented himself as a spokesperson for Imams of France although he had been dismissed from that role. He had filmed a video in front of the school with the father of the student. He referred to the teacher as a “thug” multiple times and sought to pressure the school administration via social media.
Some of the defendants expressed regrets and claimed their innocence on the eve of the verdict. They did not convince Paty’s family.
“It’s something that really shocks the family,” lawyer Virginie Le Roy said ahead of the verdicts. “You get the feeling that those in the box are absolutely unwilling to admit any responsibility whatsoever.”
“Apologies are pointless, they won’t bring Samuel back, but explanations are precious to us,” Le Roy said. “We haven’t had many explanations of the facts.”
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