Through Andrew Chung
As reported by Reuters, On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted permission for a Louisiana police officer who was injured during a protest in 2016 to prosecute a Black Lives Matter activist. This ruling has the potential to increase the dangers associated with participating in public demonstrations, which are considered a defining characteristic of American democracy.
The justices upheld a lower court’s ruling that reopened a lawsuit filed by Baton Rouge police officer John Ford, who accused DeRay Mckesson of negligence after being struck by a rock during a demonstration in response to the fatal shooting of African American man Alton Sterling, by declining to hear his appeal.
In 2023, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, located in New Orleans, dismissed Mckesson’s defense that the negligence claim does not apply to his rights to free speech and assembly as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Mckesson was advised by legal counsel, which included an attorney affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Numerous demonstrations occurred throughout the United States in 2015 and 2016 in response to incidents involving Black individuals and police. The Baton Rouge protest was one of many. These occurred prior to the extensive racial justice demonstrations that erupted in numerous American and international cities in 2020, in response to the fatal shooting of George Floyd, a black individual, by a white Minneapolis police officer.
The allowance of Ford’s lawsuit by the 5th Circuit may potentially streamline the process of suing protest leaders for the unlawful behavior of attendees. This development, as argued by certain legal scholars, might impede activism aimed at effecting political or societal transformation.
Sterling was shot on July 5, 2016, following an altercation outside a convenience store where he was engaged in the sale of handcrafted CDs, by a Baton Rouge police officer. In the city, ethnic tensions were exacerbated by the death. The accountability-demanding demonstration occurred in the vicinity of the police headquarters four days later.
Ford was among the officers tasked with apprehending demonstrators blocking a public thoroughfare. A projectile or piece of concrete launched by an unidentified individual struck him in the face, causing him to lose teeth and sustain head and brain injuries, according to his lawsuit.
In his lawsuit for monetary damages, Ford alleged that McKesson ought to have anticipated the violent nature of the demonstration based on his conduct while conducting it.
On the day of the demonstration, Mckesson was detained, but the allegation was subsequently dismissed.
In 2017, U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson denied Ford’s lawsuit. The 5th Circuit, however, reinstated the negligence claim in 2023, concluding that the First Amendment did not preclude it.
An argument that the lawsuit was precluded by a 1982 Supreme Court decision concerning African American civil rights activists in Mississippi that limited liability for protest leaders over the conduct of others when they are engaged in First Amendment-protected actions was rejected by the 5th Circuit.
In his dissenting opinion, 5th Circuit judge Don Willett referenced the 1965 march of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, which served as a poignant reminder of the ineligibility of African Americans to vote. Willett observed that political demonstrations, ranging from picketing to rioting, have “defined our history since the beginning.”
The majority’s 5th Circuit “theory would have enfeebled America’s street-blocking civil rights movement, imposing ruinous financial liability against citizens for exercising core First Amendment freedoms,” according to Willett.
Once before, Mckesson’s case had reached the Supreme Court. In 2020, the justices mandated that subordinate courts conduct further review in order to ascertain whether Ford’s claim was permissible under Louisiana state law.
The Black Lives Matter movement emerged subsequent to the 2012 fatal shooting in Florida involving George Zimmerman and 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who identified as Black. Its activists have criticized surveillance that is excessively aggressive, especially toward African Americans.
