Thank you!
Good news for DeRay McKesson and the Black Lives Matter movement.
According to the Washington Post, the Supreme Court
recently ruled in favor of openly gay activist DeRay McKesson. The court
decided on Monday that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit should
have checked with Louisiana’s state Supreme Court before pushing the case
upwards to the high court. As such, the case has been pushed back down to the
state Supreme Court.
But what’s the
case in question? According to CNBC, the case is focused on a July 2016
protest around the murder of Alton Sterling to police officers in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana. The protest took place on a highway in front of the city’s police
headquarters. An unnamed officer alleges that he was hit by a piece of concrete
or rock thrown by a protester. While no one knows who threw the alleged rock,
the unnamed cop decided to sue McKesson as the leader of the organized protest.
The court case
ran up to a federal district court, which rejected the officer’s stance. But
then, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision based on the
argument that “a violent confrontation with a police officer was a foreseeable
effect of negligently directing a protest.”
But again, the
Supreme Court has reversed that appeals court ruling and said that the state
Supreme Court must decide first because of the case’s “novel issues of state
law.”
Specifically,
the justices wrote, “The Louisiana Supreme Court, to be sure, may announce the
same duty as the Fifth Circuit.” They then added that the 5th Circuit should
not have “ventured into so uncertain an area” of law that was “laden with value
judgments and fraught with implications for First Amendment rights” without
first looking to the Louisiana Supreme Court for guidance.
After hearing
the Supreme Court decision, McKesson released a statement saying the
decision, “recognizes that holding me liable for organizing a protest
because an unidentifiable person threw a rock raises First Amendment concerns.”
“I’m gratified
that the Supreme Court vacated the ruling below, but amazingly, the fight is
not over,” he added.
Of course,
this isn’t the end of the case. McKesson will have to see what the Louisiana
Supreme Court thinks of the lawsuit. And then he might wind up back at the
federal Supreme Court’s doors.
SOURCE: INSTINCT MAG
