When someone claims to have been arrested for constitutionally protected speech, what kind of evidence is needed to prove that? five years ago in Nevis v. Bartlett, the Supreme Court held that an arrest, even based on probable cause, may violate the First Amendment as long as the plaintiff can provide “objective evidence that he was arrested while other similarly situated individuals were not engaging in the same type of protected speech. No arrests were made.” been. ” Today in Gonzalez v. Trevinothe court said, showing that “very specific comparative evidence” was not required to show that “identifiable persons” engaged in very similar conduct, but no Arrested.
“This is a great day for the First Amendment and for Sylvia Gonzalez, who bravely stood up to retaliatory actions by government officials,” said Anya Bidwell, senior staff attorney at the Institute for Justice. The institute represents Gonzalez, a former Castle Hill, Texas, city council member who said her political opponents orchestrated her arrest on trumped-up charges of tampering with government documents. The document is a petition spearheaded by Gonzalez himself calling for the replacement of City Manager Ryan Rapelye. Gonzalez, who pledged to seek to oust Lapeille when she ran for office, claims his allies are determined to punish her for her position.
At a May 2019 City Council meeting where complaints about Rapelye’s performance were discussed, Gonzalez picked up the petition that had been submitted to the City Council and placed it in her personal folder. She said she did so accidentally. But Mayor Edward Trevino, Police Chief John Siemens and Alexander Wright, the “special detective” assigned to investigate Gonzalez, accused her of deliberately deleting the document to avoid scrutiny of alleged wrongdoing in gathering signatures for the petition. Review.
As a result, Gonzalez was briefly jailed and his reputation was damaged. Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzalez “immediately dropped the charges upon learning of the charges,” according to Gonzalez’s petition to the Supreme Court. Trevino et al. Still, it accomplished what Gonzalez said they had been aiming for all along. “Gonzalez was deeply hurt by the experience and deeply embarrassed by the media coverage of her arrest,” the petition said. “She gave up her parliamentary seat and vowed never to organize petitions or criticize her government again. “
In July 2022, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Gonzalez’s First Amendment lawsuit against Trevino, Siemens, and Wright, saying it was doomed to fail because she failed to cite people in those cases. in case no Arrested for behavior like hers. “If we were to write on a blank sheet of paper, we would probably agree,” Justice Kurt D. Engelhardt wrote in the majority opinion, “that the Constitution should make a claim here, especially given that Gun Sares’ arrest was allegedly in response to her exercising “her right to petition.” ” but”Snow Comparative evidence is required,” he said, “because it requires ‘objective evidence’ that ‘other similarly situated individuals’ committed ‘the same’ criminal conduct but were not arrested. The evidence Gonzalez provided here was not sufficient.
The Supreme Court concluded that the standard applied by the 5th Circuit was too harsh through the courts All but one judge agreed. “We agree with Gonzalez that the Fifth Circuit took an overly narrow view of this issue. Snow”, the opinion states. “The court held that Gonzalez must provide very specific comparative evidence, i.e., examples of identifiable people who, like Gonzalez, “mishandled government petitions” but were not arrested . Although Snow exception [to the general rule that probable cause defeats a retaliatory-arrest claim] Small, the need for a nearly identical and recognizable comparator is too much.
this Snow The judge noted that the exception was meant to account for “situations where police officers might have made an arrest but would ordinarily exercise their discretion not to do so.” Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority in the case, cited jaywalking as an example.
“At many intersections, jaywalking is common but rarely results in an arrest,” Roberts wrote. “If a person who has been verbally complaining about police conduct is arrested for jaywalking at such an intersection, then the Dismissing the person’s retaliatory arrest charge on the basis of unquestionable probable cause for arrest does not appear to be sufficient to protect First Amendment rights.
According to the 5th Circuit’s reading Snow, the jaywalker must cite specific cases in which quieter pedestrians illegally crossed the street without being arrested. The Supreme Court said this interpretation was wrong: “To fall within the exception, the plaintiff must provide evidence that his arrest occurred under these circumstances. The only limits we set on the kind of evidence that the plaintiff may adduce for this purpose are The clear limitation is that it must be objective to avoid ‘significant problems arising from reviewing police conduct based on purely subjective criteria.
As the court noted, Gonzalez “claimed that she reviewed misdemeanor and felony data from Bexar County (home to Castle Hill) over the past decade and that her review found that Texas’ anti-tampering statute had never has been used in the county to bring criminal charges against people who attempt to steal non-binding or expressive documents. She “filed 215 felony indictments and described typical
The indictment involves “allegations of using or creating false government identification documents.”
“Fake social security numbers, driver’s licenses, [or] Green card.
‘False accusations’ were made against her.
Because the judges believed the Fifth Circuit erred in finding such evidence prima facie insufficient, they reversed the appeals court’s ruling and remanded the case for further consideration. But Gonzalez still has to prove she is the victim of a “political vendetta.”
Justice Samuel Alito said in a unanimous opinion that would be difficult. Alito cited evidence that Gonzalez intentionally deleted the petition, including surveillance footage showing she knew what the document was and her inconsistent statements about how it ended up in her folder.
In addition to questioning the strength of Gonzalez’s case, Alito also accused his colleagues of refusing to address another issue raised in her petition: whether the general rule that probable cause for an arrest blocks a First Amendment claim should be limited to cases involving ” Momentary” case arrests, rather than deliberate arrests. ” In this case, the investigation that led to Gonzalez’s arrest took nearly two months.
Gonzalez’s petition states that “after three weeks of investigation that yielded no results,” Siemens commissioned “an attorney and his friend” Wright “to take over as ‘special detectives.'” A month later, Wright filed The arrest affidavit, which includes the incident, cites Gonzalez’s constitutionally protected incitement against Lapeille as evidence of her crime. Gonzalez argued that the probable cause rule should not apply in this case because police had ample time to consider the consequences of their decisions. Alito argued that the court should take this opportunity to reject this argument.
In another unanimous opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that Gonzalez’s admission may have been “unwise.”[ly]”, there was probable cause to arrest her, meaning there was evidence that she “intentionally… deleted”[d]” a “Government record. Snow—totally exceptional” because it depends on her state of mind rather than her actions.
Regardless, “we are where we are,” Kavanaugh wrote. “I agree through the courts because through the courts Doesn’t seem to say anything detrimental to the law, not even
Although through the courts It has nothing (in my opinion) to do with Gonzalez’s case.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a unanimous opinion, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, that was decidedly more sympathetic to Gonzalez, as you can see based on The question was anticipated by the two justices during oral arguments in the case last March. Jackson noted that in addition to the investigation into the document tampering case, Gonzalez “pointed to, among other things, details regarding the unusual procedures surrounding her arrest, as well as statements in the arresting officer’s warrant affidavit that suggested a retaliatory motive.” Jackson said such evidence also “could support the conclusion that Gonzalez was arrested “at a time when other similarly situated individuals who did not engage in the same type of protected speech were not arrested.”
The lone dissenter was Judge Clarence Thomas, who also dissented from parts of the 2017 decision. Snow. “I continue to believe that ‘a plaintiff asserting a First Amendment retaliatory arrest claim … should be required to plead and demonstrate a lack of probable cause,'” he wrote.
Regardless of whether Gonzalez ultimately succeeds in proving his case, today’s sentence will make it easier for victims of retaliatory arrests to succeed in court. For example, Priscilla Villarreal, a journalist in Laredo, Texas, was arrested on a dubious interpretation of an obscure state law that provides for “obtaining It is a felony to seek non-public information for “profit” purposes. Her crime, according to local police and prosecutors, was asking police questions about public suicides and fatal car crashes. Villarreal is seeking a Supreme Court review of the 5th Circuit’s ruling against her, saying her true crime infuriated law enforcement officials.
The “objective evidence” supporting Villarreal’s claim of retaliatory arrests appears to be stronger than the evidence presented by Gonzalez. As six journalists (including me) pointed out in a brief supporting her Supreme Court petition, the legal theory against Villarreal would make any request to a government agency for public information deemed illegal under Texas law. It is a felony for a person to obtain information that is exempt from mandatory disclosure. This happens thousands of times each year, as documented in opinions issued by the state attorney general’s office in such cases. However, those unsuccessful information seekers were never arrested or prosecuted for the crimes Villarreal was accused of committing.
According to the Supreme Court’s clarification Snow Exception, this should certainly be considered “objective evidence” of revenge motives. Therefore, it seems likely that the Court will remand Villarreal’s case for a new trial because Gonzalez.
“The Supreme Court’s revision of the First Amendment retaliation doctrine ensures that Americans can seek justice when they have evidence of retaliatory arrests,” Bidwell said. “Retaliatory arrests undermine the foundation of our democracy, and this ruling helps We are proud to be part of this critical victory for free speech.”