Supreme Court Deals Blow to Prominent Black Lives Activist in Legal Battle with Louisiana Police Officer
The American Civil Liberties Union apparently doesn’t like it, but a man who led a protest during an election year can, in fact, be sued and potentially held accountable for the illegal actions of his followers.
And no, I’m not talking about former President Donald Trump; it’s hard to imagine the ACLU defending him.
In this case, the Supreme Court denied an appeal from the legal team of Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, which included ACLU lawyers, to be sued by Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Police Officer John Ford, according to Reuters.
Ford sued Mckesson for negligence after being “struck in the face by a rock or piece of concrete hurled by an unidentified person” on July 9, 2016, near police headquarters.
Mckesson was arrested that day, Reuters reported, but suffered no further consequences, as the charge was later dropped.
Mckesson claimed that he should not be held accountable for Ford’s injuries because his First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly protected him, essentially trumping Ford’s right not to get hit in the head with rocks.
U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson agreed with him, tossing the suit in 2017, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t and reinstated it in 2023. Mckesson then appealed to SCOTUS.
And on Monday, SCOTUS sent the case back down to the lower court to be tried.
“The Baton Rouge protest was one of numerous demonstrations in the United States in 2015 and 2016 arising from incidents involving police and Black individuals,” Reuters reported.
“These predated the massive racial justice protests that flared in various cities in the United States and abroad following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.”
The outlet also opined that a ruling against Mckesson “could make it riskier to engage in public demonstrations, a hallmark of American democracy,” which would appear indeed to be possible.
On the other hand, one could argue that making it riskier to engage in public demonstrations that result in someone “losing teeth and suffering head and brain injuries,” as Ford in his lawsuit said he did, would be in the public interest.
Unsurprisingly, Reuters cited unnamed “legal scholars” who supposedly warned that the appeals court decision “could stifle activism seeking political or societal change.”
Reuters made that claim with almost no evidence.
The only actual person cited was 5th Circuit Judge Don Willett, who dissented from the court’s opinion allowing Ford’s lawsuit to continue, arguing that if that precedent had been set 60 years ago, the civil rights movement might never have gotten off the ground.
The court’s decision “would have enfeebled America’s street-blocking civil rights movement, imposing ruinous financial liability against citizens for exercising core First Amendment freedoms,” Willett wrote.
Ford claims that Mckesson, as a leader of the 2016 protest, should have anticipated it turning violent.
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