A Supreme Court ruling Thursday will allow for proceedings to continue in a Texas woman’s case against local officials for allegedly arresting her as a form of retaliation in 2019.
Sylvia Gonzalez, who was 72 years old at the time, had taken office as a council member in Castle Hills, Texas, following a successful campaign in which she had been openly critical of the city manager, Ryan Rapelye.
Immediately after she began serving in this position, Gonzalez started helping to collect signatures on a petition to remove Rapelye from office.
As Gonzalez was packing up her belongings following a two-day city council meeting at which Rapelye’s potential removal was discussed, Mayor Edward Trevino II asked her for the petition.
She indicated that she believed it was in his possession, which he denied before asking her to check her binder for the document where it was eventually found. According to Gonzalez, she “did not intentionally put the petition in her binder” and was “surprise[d]” to find it there.
The mayor brought this incident to police who subsequently launched an investigation. As a result of this, a private attorney concluded that Gonzalez had likely violated a state anti-tampering statute. At the request of this attorney, a local magistrate issued a warrant for Gonzalez’s arrest.
She subsequently turned herself in and spent the evening in jail. Although the charges were ultimately dropped by the district attorney, she has said that it “convinced her to step away from political life.”
In her complaint, Gonzalez alleged “that she was arrested in retaliation for her role in organizing the petition for Rapelye’s removal” in violation of her First Amendment rights.
According to Gonzalez’s research, the anti-tampering statute had never previously been used in her county “to criminally charge someone for trying to steal a nonbinding or expressive document.”
The defendants moved to dismiss her claim on the basis that “the presence of probable cause” defeated her “retaliatory-arrest claims against the individual defendants.”
This motion was denied in District Court despite Gonzalez’s admission that probable cause existed on account of the fact that it fell within an exception to the probable-cause rule wherein the circumstances would generally lead officers to exercise discretion and not make an arrest.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals went on to reverse this decision because Gonzalez failed to provide “‘comparative evidence’ of ‘otherwise similarly situated individuals who
engaged in the same criminal conduct but were not arrested.'”
Thursday the Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling and remanded the case back to the lower court with the directive of determining whether or not the evidence she provided is sufficient to satisfy this probable-cause exception.
Although several Justices offered concurring opinions, the only member of the Court to dissent was Justice Clarence Thomas.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas argued that “‘plaintiffs bringing a First Amendment retaliatory-arrest claim…should have to plead and prove a lack of probable cause.'”
“As she sees it, even though the defendants had probable cause to arrest her, they did so only in retaliation for her constitutionally protected speech,” Thomas wrote. “Abuse of process, however, appeared to be less concerned with why process was initiated and more with whether process was ultimately used as ‘intended by the law.'”
According to Thomas, the majority’s decision represents an expansion of the existing exception to probable cause by making it applicable “if a plaintiff presents evidence of any objective fact that ‘makes it more likely that an officer has declined to arrest someone for engaging in such conduct in the past.'”
Gonzalez’s case will now be returned to the Fifth Circuit for further consideration.
“This has been a nightmare for the last five years,” Gonzalez said in a statement, according to the Texas Tribune. “It has kept me up at night, but finally I can sleep knowing that the nightmare I’ve gone through will protect critics from retaliation in the future.”
The city of Castle Hills also reportedly issued a statement, saying “although this extends the timeline, we welcome the further review of the case by the 5th Circuit.”
Some people will never learn, only liberals are allowed to break laws.