The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of a Texas-based online citizen journalist who argued that she was wrongly arrested in a case that drew attention from media organisations and free speech advocates.
The justices left in place a divided federal appeals court ruling that found Priscilla Villarreal, known online as La Gordiloca, could not sue police officers and other officials over her arrest for seeking and obtaining nonpublic information from police.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, writing that it should have been obvious the arrest violated the First Amendment. The high court had previously directed the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals to review the case in light of a ruling in another Texas matter, but the lower court effectively stood by its earlier decision.
Villarreal had sought and obtained from a police officer the identities of a man who killed himself and a family involved in a car accident, then published the information on Facebook. The arrest affidavit said she did so to gain followers. A state judge later dismissed the criminal case, ruling the law used to arrest her in 2017 was unconstitutional.
She then sought to sue the officials for damages, but the full Fifth Circuit ruled 9-7 that the officials from Laredo and Webb County were entitled to legal immunity. Her lawyers argued that the appeals court had granted officials free rein to turn routine news reporting into a felony.
