Supreme Court rejects online citizen journalist’s appeal over her arrest in Texas

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the appeal of a Texas-based online citizen journalist who said she was wrongly arrested in a case that has drawn the attention of national media organizations and free speech advocates.

The justices upheld a divided federal appeals court ruling that found that journalist Priscilla Villarreal, known online as La Gordeluca, could not sue police officers and other officials over her arrest for seeking and obtaining nonpublic information from police.

Read more: Supreme Court rejects Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed’s appeal of DNA testing

“It should be clear that this arrest violates the First Amendment,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

The Supreme Court had previously directed the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals to review the Villarreal case in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in another case from Texas. In June 2024, judges gave a former local elected official another chance to pursue her lawsuit alleging that she, too, was wrongly arrested.

In that case, Sylvia Gonzalez, a former city councilwoman in the San Antonio suburb of Castle Hills, said she was arrested in retaliation as part of a dispute with a political rival.

He listens: The Supreme Court is considering late-arriving mail-in ballot laws in a case that could affect the midterm elections

But the Fifth Circuit stuck to its previous ruling, and this time the justices refused to intervene without explanation. “The Fifth Circuit has doubled down on officials being free to turn routine news reports into a felony,” Villarreal’s lawyers wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court.

A state judge had previously dismissed the criminal case against Villareal, saying the law used to arrest her in 2017 was unconstitutional. She then sought to sue those responsible for damages. The full Fifth Circuit ruled 9-7 that officials who sued Villarreal in Laredo and Webb County were entitled to statutory immunity.

Villarreal had sought – and obtained from a police officer – the identity of the person who killed himself and his family involved in a car accident and posted the information on Facebook. The arrest affidavit said she sought the information to gain followers on Facebook.