Last June, we wrote about a Kansas woman, Mary Anne Sause, who had police come to her house to investigate a noise complaint. During the officers’ investigation, she knelt down to pray, at which point the officers ordered her to stop praying and stand up. She sued them, arguing that the officers violated her First Amendment… Read More Kansas Woman Ordered by Police to Stop Praying Will Get Her Day in Court
Law-enforcement officers showed up at the house of Merritt Sharp, looking for his son, for whom the officers had an arrest warrant. They mistook Sharp for his son, arrested Sharp, and put him in the back of their squad car. Sharp was livid, “loudly swearing” and “threatening to sue them.” A few minutes later, the… Read More Unconstitutional for Police to Detain California Man for Being “Argumentative”
This is another highway-overpass-protests case. In 2013, in St. Charles, Missouri — about 30 minutes northwest of St. Louis — Jimmy Duane Weed participated in a protest of President Obama’s policies on a highway overpass. Weed and his fellow protestors held signs directed at the traffic beneath them. After the protestors arrived on the overpass,… Read More Police Okay to Remove Protesters from Missouri Highway Overpass
[UPDATE: On June 28, 2018, the Supreme Court reversed the decision described below.] Two police officers went to the home of Mary Anne Sause in Louisburg, Kansas, 40 miles south of Kansas City, to investigate a noise complaint. Sause eventually invited them inside. Sause mentioned the Constitution and Bill of Rights, for which the officers… Read More Kansas Police Okay to Stop Suspect’s Prayer to Arrest Her
Mary Lee is the elected Clerk for Mathews Township–a small, rural town in South Dakota. She also owns land through which a creek runs before running underneath a nearby street via culverts. The creek flooded in 2011, requiring the town to replace the culverts. Mary and her husband wanted the culverts to be bigger–presumably to accommodate… Read More South Dakota Official Excluded from Town Board Meetings
Nevada Highway Patrol Major Kevin Tice announced a policy prohibiting officers from talking about the K-9 program with anyone outside the department. Some officers complained that Tice’s policy was designed to prevent them from publicizing problems in the K9 program. So they sued Tice, alleging that the policy’s restriction on speech violated the First Amendment.… Read More Police Department’s Policy Banning Discussion of K-9 Program Unconstitutional
Michael Billioni worked in the central control area of a prison where he could see all the security camera footage–past and present. He saw something disturbing, told his wife (who told a reporter), denied to his boss that he told anyone, later confessed, and then was fired. Now, he’s suing, claiming that he had a First… Read More South Carolina Prison Guard Fired for Whistle-Blowing About Inmate Mistreatment
Jennifer Anderson set up an anonymous blog and Facebook page called “Exposedat.” Her goal was to highlight and question intertwined personal and business relationships involving public officials in her parish in Louisiana. (Louisiana doesn’t have counties; they have “parishes.”) She made a particular set of postings that got her into hot water with the local sheriff.… Read More Louisiana Sheriff Prosecutes Blogger, Likely Violated First Amendment
This is another decision affirming the right to record on-duty police officers in public. The facts here are unsurprising: some people filmed some police officers, the officers didn’t like it, arrested the filmers, filmers sued. Filming police is–as the court said–a “common practice.” Think of all of the on-duty police you’ve seen on film recently:… Read More First Amendment Protects Right to Film On-Duty Police Officers
There’s a group called the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, and they have a student chapter at Iowa State University. That chapter is an official student group like all the others. The student group made t-shirts that included their name, the Iowa State logo, and a marijuana leaf. The group had… Read More Iowa State Wrongly Discriminated Against Pro-Marijuana Student Group’s T-Shirts
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