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SCOTUS Declines to Review First Amendment Mass Protest Rights Case

“[P]eople don’t need to be afraid to show up. The Constitution still protects our right to protest,” McKesson said.

Brian Jackson, the chief judge of Louisiana Middle District Court, said in his 2017 opinion on McKesson’s motion to dismiss that the officer failed to “state a plausible claim for relief against an individual or entity that both has the capacity to be sued and falls within the precisely tailored category of persons that may be held liable for his injuries, which he allegedly suffered during activity that was otherwise constitutionally protected.” Jackson pointed out that not only are social movements immune to lawsuits, but that the officer failed to demonstrate that McKesson overstepped the boundaries of First Amendment-protected speech, which is understood to safeguard political protests. “Such an exotic theory would have enfeebled America’s street-blocking civil rights movement, imposing ruinous financial liability against citizens for exercising core First Amendment freedoms,” Judge Don Willett wrote in his dissent.

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