The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently denied an appeal by Texas citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal, who asserted that her 2018 arrest for misuse of official information was unconstitutional. The arrest followed Villarreal’s report on an ongoing investigation surrounding the suicide of a federal law enforcement agency employee, based information she received from a Laredo Police Department source, Officer Barbara Goodman. Villarreal used the information, which the authorities had not yet cleared for public consumption, to structure her report. The report published on Villarreal’s popularFacebook page, commonly known as “La Gordiloca,” divulged sensitive information including the decedent’s name and the location where the incident occurred.
Villarreal was charged under Tex. Penal Code § 39.06(c), a law that outlaws the solicitation of official information that is yet to be made public. However, her charge was eventually dismissed on the grounds of the law being unconstitutionally vague. Following the dismissal, Villarreal filed a civil rights claim against the city of Laredo and the officers who arrested her, arguing that the arrest was a contravention of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable seizures and the First Amendment’s free speech and press protections.
On appeal, the Fifth Circuit denied Villarreal’s claims. Concerning the Fourth Amendment, the court ruled that Villarreal did not meet the burden of proof to demonstrate that her arrest was based on an unreasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. On the First Amendment claim, the court believed that the arresting officers were entitled to qualified immunity, and as such, could not be sued for arresting Villarreal in a scenario where her clearly defined statutory or constitutional rights were not infringed. The court went further to state that Villarreal could not cite any precedent case to support her claim.
Despite the ruling, Villarreal expressed her resolution to continue pursuing the issue. She stated, “I’m disappointed but I’m going to keep up the fight for my rights and those of all Americans.”