SCOTUS Schizophrenia

An obscure case involving a Texas city government is before the SCOTUS. Naturally, there are complex legal questions and a recent case upon which a decision may rely. However, stepping back from the minutia of legalese, I see the Court asking itself what is necessary proof that Joe Biden, the Deep State, DOJ, FBI and/or government in general, even a city government, has prosecuted someone because they expressed certain protected free speech, to which government officials objected. Is this case an excuse for the Court to address what it sees, along with everyone in America, is happening to Donald Trump currently? Is this a back door for the Court to proclaim what is or is not election interference? To answer the question in this case the Justices must specify what proof one must produce to support their indictment was politically motivated?

In Gonzalez v. Trevinoon, this past week the Justices heard oral arguments of a Texas city council member who contends that she was arrested in retaliation for her criticism of the city’s manager. During just under 90 minutes of oral argument, the justices struggled to determine what kind of evidence plaintiffs in such cases need to show for their cases to go forward.

The former city council member, Sylvia Gonzalez, was the first Hispanic woman elected to the city council in Castle Hills, Tex. In 2019, after a long meeting, Gonzalez placed a petition that she had initiated, criticizing the city’s manager, in her binder at the end of a long meeting.

Gonzalez claims that she picked up the petition accidentally. But two months later she was charged with violating a state law that prohibits tampering with government records. Gonzalez, then 72 years old, was arrested and spent a day in jail, although prosecutors declined to pursue the charges against her.

Gonzalez then filed a federal civil rights claim against the mayor, police chief, and lawyer who had investigated her, alleging that she had been arrested in retaliation for her criticism of the city’s manager. In her complaint, she contended that she was the only person charged under the state law in the past 10 years for temporarily misplacing a document.

Under the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Nieves v. Bartlett, a plaintiff can normally only bring a federal civil rights claim alleging that she was arrested in retaliation for exercising her First Amendment rights if she can show that there was no probable cause to arrest her. But the court in Nieves also carved out an exemption from that general requirement for plaintiffs who can show that others who were not engaged in the same kind of protected speech were not arrested. (See Cases: Gonzalez v. Trevino

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Court hears Texas city council member’s retaliatory arrest claim, SCOTUSblog (Mar. 21, 2024, 10:37 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/03/court-hears-texas-city-council-members-retaliatory-arrest-claim/)

This is beyond coincidence. I’m not predicting an outcome, but all the talk, court cases, investigations, judgements and claims of election interference in the last two years rest upon the edge of a knife blade that is a small Texas city court case.