Supreme Court Win on Free Speech and Qualified Immunity

A muckraking menace to corrupt officials scores a big SCOTUS victory for free speech. 

By Scott D. Cosenza, Esq. | Oct 16, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News Articles, Tags: Law, Opinion, Politics 

Laredo’s “Lagordiloca” won a victory for freedom of speech and struck a blow against official oppression and police-qualified immunity. Much like Donald Trump, Priscilla Villarreal was prosecuted by authorities, who disliked her threat to their power, via a novel application of the law. It was used in a preposterous way to punish behavior that is not even objectionable, much less criminal. She was prosecuted for asking a government official to comment on a story. The shocking thing is, there’s not more to it than that. Her case was tossed around until Tuesday, Oct. 15^, when the Supreme Court, without dissent, came down with a pro-freedom ruling.

‘Lagordiloca’ is a Journalist

Ms. Villarreal does her reporting via social media posts. The New York Times called her “arguably the most influential journalist in Laredo, Texas” and a “swearing muckraker.” Her style is free-form, without editorial oversight, and ranges from profane gossip to hard-hitting exposés of local officials. That criticism – and officials’ willingness to weaponize their offices in opposition to it – led eventually to Tuesday’s Supreme Court order. Instead of cleaning up their own behavior and offices, the officials, including two prosecutors and the police chief, conspired to manufacture her arrest.

Laredo police regularly harassed the reporter at the encouragement of police chief Claudio Treviño. District Attorney Isidro Alaniz and an assistant DA, Marisela Jacaman, poured over the statute books with Trevino to find any possible way to use some law to punish Villarreal. They came across a 23-year-old statute that local officials had never enforced. It was designed to prevent government corruption by prohibiting people from soliciting non-public information for their gain.

Texas Penal Code § 39.06(c) creates a felony for those who, “with intent to obtain a benefit,” “solicits or receives from a public servant information that . . . has not been made public.” For instance, you can imagine that a senior government regulator in the oil and gas sector could reveal information to a market player they could trade on to great fortune. Here, though, it was used against a reporter asking for a comment. She asked a police source for information on stories she covered – information that wasn’t publicly published – as any journalist would.

Supreme Court Puts Police in Check

Laredo police snapped cellphone pictures of her in handcuffs while mocking and laughing at her as she turned herself in after learning she was wanted. Ms. Villarreal beat the criminal charges when a state court judge found the statute unconstitutionally vague. Then came the battle for civil damages. She sued her persecutors in Federal Court for violating her First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The district court granted the defendant qualified immunity, cratering her case.

Qualified immunity gives government officials immunity from suit if the way they violate someone’s rights isn’t “clearly established.” It is also maddening to individual rights advocates who see it as a judge-made law granting a free pass for the government to trample the people’s rights.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed – denying the defendants qualified immunity, with an opinion stating, “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.” That wasn’t the end of it, however. A judge on the Fifth Circuit didn’t like that decision and got their colleagues to agree to re-hear the case en banc, where, instead of a three-judge panel randomly chosen from all the appeals court judges in the circuit, all the judges might participate. There were sixteen at re-hearing, where the vote was 9-7 to grant the defendants qualified immunity.

No Dissenters

Villarreal appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which sent down an order vacating the qualified immunity ruling. They did not have a trial; the Court simply issued an order doing away with the en banc ruling, allowing the lawsuit for the civil rights violations to proceed. Lagordiloca’s case was filed by the Foundation For Individual Rights and Expression, which has now replaced the ACLU as the nation’s preeminent civil rights law firm.

Dig Deeper into the Themes Discussed in this Article!

Liberty Vault: 303 Creative L.L.C. v. Elenis

Liberty Vault: United States v. Alvarez

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Read More From Scott D. Cosenza, Esq.

How Qualified Immunity Leads To Weaponized Government

 If emboldened and protected government officials can weaponize the government against someone like Trump, then they can do the same to you.  

By Keith Gross April 12, 2023 

A bedrock American principle is that our government is not only for but also by the people. Our founders created a system in which citizens have the power to protect themselves and the nation by acting as a check against potentially authoritarian government officials. The indictment of Donald Trump shines a light on a troubling example of how that power is being removed from the people to instead protect government officials in the form of judge-created doctrines of immunity.

Since the 1870s, American citizens have been able to use legal means to hold government officials accountable for actions that violate their constitutional rights. The knowledge that citizens could take legal action against them was a good reminder to be above reproach and serve only the people’s best interest. 

But the Supreme Court has since established what is known now as the doctrine of qualified immunity and a doctrine of absolute immunity for certain officials, including prosecutors. These doctrines undermine the laws passed by Congress and shield government officials from being held accountable by the citizens they are sworn to serve, in the increasingly frequent event that they do not discharge that duty lawfully.  The effect on our government has been devastating, and never more so than now. .............To Read More....

Radical prosecutors could end up losing their legal immunity

Congress looking for solution to elected DAs who don't follow the law 

By Bob Unruh April 3, 2023

It's no secret that leftist billionaire George Soros has been donating, sometimes heavily, to the campaigns of leftist district attorneys who, once they are in office, impose their own bias regarding justice. They decline to prosecute certain crimes, they decline to seek prison terms for convicts, they work to arrange early release for those already in jail.  Significantly, in most cases, they allow crimes to skyrocket in their jurisdictions, to the point businesses and residents are seeking to move out.  Now Republicans in the U.S. House have come up with a response to the agenda: To strip those officials of their legal immunity........To Read More....

If Police Have No Qualified Immunity, Nor Should Any Judge, DA or Politician

There will be no end to the Pandora’s Box that will be opened, and attorneys’ will prosper wildly. But those self-serving politicians, judges and DA’s will be the ones who think twice before rendering decisions that harm Americans with respect to criminal leniency issues. We as a nation will suffer if police lose qualified immunity. If police have no qualified immunity, nor should any judge, DA, politician or government official

By Linda Martinelli, Business Leader, Show Host & Columnist August 18th, 2020

He killed her.  Circuit Judge Nolan Dawkins released Ibrahim Bouaichi, who had been ordered to remain in prison until his trial for violently raping Karla Dominguez in her home last October. He was released from prison to protect him from getting Covid. Who protected Karla?

Seven inmates who were deemed high risk sex offenders were released early in April by a court commissioner in Orange County, California. Their crimes were many and each had a long history of sexual crimes as well as many other crimes. Jails were not overcrowded, so what was the reason to put the public at risk once again? Some of these criminals have already been re-arrested for new crimes against innocent and unsuspecting Americans, one within two weeks of release.

It gets much worse. In California, Gavin Newsom is releasing over 17,000 convicted criminals back into the public domain, over 11,000 this month of August. They have released over 300 inmates with active coronavirus already. They cannot make them stay quarantined, and they don’t.

This is what our elected officials are handing the public.  How many Americans will be victimized by 17,600 inmates, criminals all, being released into their communities due to Covid?
When the leftists talk about taking qualified immunity from police officers who are here to protect the public it makes my blood boil..............

Judges should no longer have qualified immunity. More harm, by far, has been done by judges making stupid, uninformed, biased and dangerous decisions in releasing criminals from jails and prisons, and by not sentencing people who should be put away, than by police officers. The victims of these judges’ dangerous lenient decisions should be able to personally sue the judge.

They should also be able to sue the District Attorney who refused to file on violent criminals and politicians and any DA who releases all the protesters arrested for arson, vandalism,  assault, looting, and a multitude of crimes committed during these Marxist riots........To Read More...