A Laredo citizen journalist was jailed in violation of her First Amendment rights. Then I wound up in her habeas corpus petition.
Things I expected: La Gordiloca, the citizen journalist and thorn in the side of Laredo law enforcement, filed a petition to get rid of any possible charges against her based on clear violation of her First Amendment rights.
Things I did not expect: My name showed up in a habeas corpus petition on Valentine’s Day.
As you may recall, La Gordiloca (the pseudonym of Priscilla Villarreal) was arrested in December on suspicion of “Misuse of Official Information,” a felony charge in the Texas Penal Code. She has not been formally charged, but she has been released on bond. In short, she had a source inside the police department who was leaking info to her before it was officially public, including the name of a suicide victim. She pushed it out on her Facebook page, and police believe that by doing this, she “solicited” non-public information from a public servant “with intent to obtain a benefit.” The “benefit” would presumably be her audience on Facebook because she’s not doing it for profit.
Of course, the “benefit” would also be a direct result of exercising her free press rights under the First Amendment. There is no way a charge like this could possibly stand against her — it flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bartnicki v. Vopper, which guarantees First Amendment protection for publishing even illegally leaked information in the public interest as long as you didn’t illegally obtain it.
The theory of arrest also falls short because the Texas law defines non-public information as that which is “prohibited from disclosure” by the state’s Public Information Act. The PIA doesn’t prohibit anything from disclosure — this provision is poorly drafted — but courts have interpreted it to mean “information that is subject to an exception from disclosure under the Public Information Act.” And let’s be very clear — a suicide victim’s name does NOT fall under an exception from disclosure under the Texas PIA.
So, I and other free press advocates have been generally horrified that police are abusing the law to try to intimidate and silence a citizen journalist. We’ve spoken about it to journalists covering the matter; I was interviewed by Jason Buch at the San Antonio Express-News in December about this.
And that’s how I wound up in a habeas petition. The wide-ranging request by La Gordiloca’s lawyers seeks to have her released from bond generally alleging that her First Amendment rights have been violated by her arrest. And, in general, I agree — that’s an accurate assessment. My comments in Buch’s article were included in the wide-ranging petition for relief, on page 45:
In short, La Gordiloca’s lawyers are trying to get her released from bond via habeas corpus in their petition to (a) strike down the Misuse of Public Information law on First Amendment grounds as vague and overbroad, and (b) strike down the Texas Public Information Act, which it argues is unconstitutionally vague and violates the First Amendment.
The first of these is plausible — even if the law isn’t unconstitutional on its face, as La Gordiloca’s lawyers argue — it certainly violates her constitutional rights as applied. She’s being punished for publishing truthful information that is part of a public record subject to disclosure under the Texas Public Information Act.
The latter, however, is utter madness, as can be detected by my utter bafflement in the quote at the end of Jason Buch’s story posted last night. The Public Information Act exists to guarantee citizens access to the records of its government bodies. The act does not prohibit speech of any kind, and thus there’s no way it could violate La Gordiloca’s First Amendment rights. While it may be an imperfect law, and it may often be used by government officials to frustrate and obfuscate rather than to enlighten the citizens about its activities, it’s certainly constitutional. And it belongs nowhere in a habeas corpus petition.
