The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decided Monday that it would not hear an appeal from Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist and Bowdoin College graduate DeRay McKesson.
SCOTUS’ refusal to hear the appeal will allow McKesson to be sued by a Louisiana police officer who was injured during a 2016 BLM riot organized by McKesson.
“I’ve been dealing with this lawsuit since 2016 when a Baton Rouge police officer sued me as he claims my actions caused him to get hit with a rock. And now we are back to the Supreme Court. Hopefully this gets settled soon and the right to protest is firmly established,” said McKesson in a January post on X.
In 2016, Mckesson organized a BLM protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, organized by McKesson following the fatal shooting of black man Alton Sterling by police, as Sterling was reaching for a gun during an altercation with police.
Officer John Ford was struck in the head by a rock by an unidentified assailant.
Following the incident, Ford brought a lawsuit against McKesson, accusing him of negligence in organizing a protest which he failed to prevent from becoming violent.
McKesson has been portraying that lawsuit as an assault on the “right to protest” and legal proceedings have been delayed for years as courts deliberated on whether Ford could sue him on the basis of someone else’ actions during a protest he organized.
The suit was initially dismissed in 2017 by U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson, but was later revived.
The U.S. fifth circuit court of appeals ruled in 2023 that Ford could sue McKesson and that the lawsuit did not violate the defendant’s rights to free speech and free assembly, reviving the case.
The fifth circuit ruling determined that McKesson’s case was not covered by a 1982 SCOTUS decision protecting protest organizers.
McKesson, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), then submitted an appeal to SCOTUS, which was rejected on Monday.
“Today, the Supreme Court did not grant cert in my case. This has been going on since 2016. And now we go back to the District Court. This has been endless,” said McKesson on X following the SCOTUS rejection.
McKesson has made a career out of BLM activism, publishing a book acclaimed by Ibriam X. Kendi, and receiving honorary doctorates from multiple colleges, including Bowdoin.
He graduated from Bowdoin College in 2007, and worked in education, teaching at a New York public school, before moving on to become the “interim chief human capital officer” for Baltimore schools.
It is not yet clear when legal proceedings will resume against McKesson following the SCOTUS decision not to hear his appeal.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="27428 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=27428">8 Comments
So Bowdoin has communit organizer majors
Can t wait to stop paying taxes in this brain dead state
Did not know that Bowdoin had fallen so far as to enroll full fledged communists. From whence did Mc Kesson come to Maine?
Maybe if he hadn’t been stupid enough to get involved with BLM, none of this would be his problem.
Who is funding his legal trip; The Death to America friends?
Deray(nice name) looks like another upstanding citizen who just likes to assault the evil police.
Let me get this straight: An activist for.a fraudulent , RACIST (and therefore unconstitutional) organization (BLM) which seeks to treat people differently based on the color of their skin (very Democrat-party who believe that black people are not intelligent enough to be successful in life—since they have believed since they wanted to keep them as slaves during the civil war), is trying to weasel out of liability for a police officer’s injuries that occurred during this activist’s event, to drum up false sympathy for a CRIMINAL who pulled out a weapon often used in murder to threaten said policeman, who moved to defend himself properly, as trained. AND WE ARE EVEN DEBATING THIS NONSENSE? Never in the history of the WORLD has a minority group, based on their skin color, been given by a society more leeway, special rights, scholarships, special financial programs, free everything from education to computers to housing, to free healthcare, to government assistance, to leniency in law and punishment, to sympathy from rich whites who live far far away from them (on purpose–see all rich white democrats, see Liberal Media), preference in applications from jobs to college, and BEYOND. And yet still—we are here reading the ridiculousness of this article.
Let’s hope McKesson gets dinged for at least the same amount TRUMP has been penalized for daring to exercise his own First Amendment rights. That would be real “just desserts.”
The aclu lost one. Good.