Participated in an amicus brief (with the Reporters Committee and other amici) filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Faulk v. City of St. Louis. The case arises from a 2018 lawsuit that former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Michael Faulk filed against the City of St. Louis after he was assaulted and arrested while covering protests in 2017. Faulk alleged that his First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated. At issue on appeal, among other things, is whether qualified immunity can protect police officers who make a mass arrest of a crowd while making no accommodation for individuals engaged in newsgathering. The amicus brief explains the importance of crowd-control tactics that accommodate newsgathering. It also explains that the Appellants’ probable-cause theory would likely create an unconstitutional restriction on newsgathering. [2021]
