Sylvia Gonzalez, a former Castle Hills, Texas, city council member, plausibly alleges that she was driven from public life by a trumped-up, politically motivated arrest aimed at punishing her for engaging in advocacy protected by the First Amendment. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court considered what sort of "objective evidence" she needs to prove that claim.
The case, Gonzalez v. Trevino, hinges on how to read the Court's 2019 decision in Nieves v. Bartlett, which added "a narrow qualification" to the general rule that the existence of probable cause is enough to defeat a retaliatory arrest claim. In "circumstances where officers have probable cause to make arrests, but typically exercise their discretion not to do so," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in Nieves, "an unyielding requirement to show the absence of probable cause could pose 'a risk that some police officers may exploit the arrest power as a means of suppressing speech.'"
