The Supreme Court told a federal appeals court to take a new look at whether a citizen journalist in Texas can sue officials over her arrest for asking questions of a police source. The court threw out a 9-7 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Priscilla Villarreal could not sue police officers and other officials over her arrest because they enjoyed qualified immunity, a legal defense that can shield government officials from liability in lawsuits, Reuters reports. The high court directed the 5th Circuit to reconsider the case after the Supreme Court in a Texas case revived a lawsuit by a former member of a city council alleging she was arrested in retaliation for criticizing an official. In that case, the Supreme Court found that the 5th Circuit took too narrow of a view of precedent setting the standard for when a claim that someone was arrested in retaliation for exercising their free speech rights under the First Amendment could proceed.
Villarreal, an online citizen journalist in Laredo, has become one of the city's most popular news sources, with 120,000-plus people following her Facebook page where she regularly reports on crime, events and government. She was charged with two felony counts of misuse of information after she published the identities of suicide and car crash victims on Facebook, using information she verified with a police officer. A Texas statute makes it a crime to solicit non-public information from a government official with an intent to obtain a benefit. Prosecutors alleged she used the information to amass more Facebook followers. U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones called it "inappropriate" to "portray her as a martyr for the sake of journalism," and that Villarreal "skirted" the Texas law to boost her reputation for scoops."
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