Court: website alleging police corruption shouldn’t have been shut down

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Local cops posted text, audio showing claimed corruption—then their bosses sued.

by Cyrus Farivar

Lafayette, Louisiana is known as the capital of Cajun culture—and it'll now also exist as a reference point in First Amendment case law.

On Monday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that previously allowed a website created by current and former members of the Lafayette Police Department, describing allegations of top-to-bottom corruption, to be shuttered. (City officials denied the site's allegations.)

Initially, the Lafayette Police sued the owners of the site and got a magistrate judge to order that the site be “closed and removed immediately.” This was a way for that court to avoid influencing a prospective jury pool in a related civil case.

But in today's unanimous decision, the three judges wrote:

We disagree, however, with the Lafayette PD Defendants’ implicit suggestion in their briefs (made explicit at oral argument) that the Officers have a complete “either or” choice between filing a lawsuit and exercising their First Amendment rights. This area, as the district court recognized, demands a nuanced approach to the delicate balance between the necessity of avoiding a tainted jury pool and the rights of parties to freely air their views and opinions in the “market square” now taking form of the electronic square known as the Internet. The district court faithfully and carefully addressed numerous precedents surrounding the use of “gag orders” and applied a careful and nuanced approach in much of the challenged order. When it came to the Website, however, the nuanced approach gave way to a more wholesale striking of its entire content—indeed, the very website itself.

In a court hearing earlier this year, a journalist for The Advocate reported that Judge Catharina Haynes noted that the website constituted “core speech” and was therefore protected by the First Amendment.

Courtesy: arstechnica

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