The majority opinion, authored by Judge Edith Jones, appointed by former President Ronald Regan, finds that local officials were reasonable when they used an obscure Texas law to arrest Gordiloca and thereby criminalize a wide range of what has been considered basic accountability journalism. The ruling applies in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
“Any law enforcement agency basically has a green light right now to go out and arrest and threaten or detain journalists who publish documents that are leaked from the government,” said attorney Daxton “Chip” Stewart, a media law professor at Texas Christian University, in an interview about the ruling. “And … if that journalist spends a night in jail, they don’t have a remedy and can’t sue for a civil rights violation.”
The court sidestepped addressing the Texas law’s constitutionality, and Jones couched her findings on whether Laredo officials knowingly violated Villarreal’s civil rights when they arrested her in 2017.
Something’s going to have to give and soon. Police need to carry individual malpractice insurance, where gross negligence results in personal liability, and blanket qualified immunity as a whole needs to go.
No other institution has built a self-licking ice cream cone like law enforcement. The US health care system certainly tries, but at least it doesn’t have a monopoly on the use of force. Until the incentives change, there’s no future where civil relations recover. You just can’t remove liability for bad faith abuse of power and expect an organization to self-police its behavior.
Crushingly ironic that the “don’t tread on me” crowd are the loudest proponents of the wholesale gutting of freedom of the press/speech…