I am sorry, but the courts should rule in favor of citizens, always. Not the Authorities, we are getting ever closer to the slippery slope to totalitarianism.
So I guess claiming free speech as the reason for beating the crap out of a Trump supporter just got a bit harder.
To be clear:
The ruling in no way limits what someone can say about the police. Bartlett sued the police, claiming the arrest was because he had criticized the police. The court found that since the police had “probable cause” (i.e., Bartlett was allegedly visibly drunk), the police had not acted improperly. That is, the police can’t retaliate by enforcing the law.
This is a real screw-up for civil libertarians, however. CNN notes, “Justice Samuel Alito, on the other hand, worried during arguments about finding a line that would toss out frivolous claims but protect claims with merit, such as a journalist who wrote something critical of a police department and then later is given a “citation for driving 30 miles an hour in a 20-25 mile an hour zone.””
Complete Ruling and many more details here:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-1174_m5o1.pdf
Bypass TF out of Clinton News Network.
From the decision, this sounds very reasonable:
“To prevail on a claim such as Bartlett’s, the plaintiff must show
not only that the official acted with a retaliatory motive and that the
plaintiff was injured, but also that the motive was a “but-for” cause of the injury.”
Further, it seems as if Alito’s concerns were met:
“Thus, the no-probable-cause requirement should not apply when a plaintiff presents objective evidence that he was arrested when otherwise similarly situated individuals not engaged in the same sort of protected speech had not been. “
VERDICT: CNN is guilty of FAKE NEWS!!!
O/T: Someone please post Clarence Thomas ripping the abortion butchers a new one.
You just know this ruling will be used against us someday, perhaps sooner rather than later.
The 9th Circus gets overruled, again.
Maybe the two new Trump judges will right their sorry record.
5.56mm
A good quote from his dissent...
The parties approach their dispute from some common ground. Both sides accept that an officer violates the First Amendment when he arrests an individual in retaliation for his protected speech. They seem to agree, too, that the presence of probable cause does not undo that violation or erase its significance. And for good reason. History shows that governments sometimes seek to regulate our lives finely, acutely, thoroughly, and exhaustively. In our own time and place, criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something. If the state could use these laws not for their intended purposes but to silence those who voice unpopular ideas, little would be left of our First Amendment liberties, and little would separate us from the tyrannies of the past or the malig- nant fiefdoms of our own age. The freedom to speak with- out risking arrest is "one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation." Houston v. Hill, 482 U. S. 451, 463 (1987).