The Supreme Court just delivered a significant blow to citizen journalists, rejecting a case brought by Priscilla Villarreal against Texas officials who had arrested her for reporting. This decision, announced on Monday, means Villarreal’s civil rights claim, which argued her First Amendment free speech rights were violated, cannot move forward.
According to NBC News, Villarreal, an online journalist from Laredo, Texas, has built a substantial local following through her Facebook page. Back in 2017, she reached out to a police officer to confirm the identities of a suicide victim and a car accident victim, details that weren’t yet public. After getting the information, she reported it to her audience. You’d think a journalist doing their job would be fine, but Laredo officials saw it differently.
