Sonia Sotomayor fumes at Supreme Court colleagues as they knock back free speech case

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor tore into her colleagues — and the lower courts — for failing to protect the rights of a citizen journalist who was arrested in Texas for reporting on information a government official willingly handed over.

According to Slate's Shirin Ali, "The case of Villarreal v. Alaniz has been ping-ponging through the courts since 2019, when it was first filed by Priscilla Villarreal. She is a citizen journalist based in Laredo, in south Texas, and is considered a muckraker, a 10th grade dropout who became a journalist to cover the ins and outs of the southern border, which is a focal point of her community.

"Her tactics were unconventional, often including livestreaming the news from her pickup truck to a now-defunct Facebook page as it was happening. In a town of roughly 260,000, her 'news on the move' operation garnered about 100,000 followers. In 2019 the New York Times declared Villarreal 'the most influential journalist in Laredo.'"

The trouble started when Villareal obtained the names of victims in a local suicide and car accident, which resulted in officials arresting her at home for violating 39.06(c) of the Texas Penal Code — an obscure, never-before-enforced statute that prohibits receiving nonpublic information from a government official for personal benefit. Laredo officials claimed the "benefit" in question was views on her Facebook account.

This case has gone back and forth between multiple courts, with some Trump-backed judges like James Ho ruling in Villareal's favor — but the full 5th Circuit ultimately ruled against her, 9-6, and this week, the Supreme Court declined to review that decision.

They gave no reason for their decision. Sotomayor was the sole dissenter.

Sotomayor's dissent furiously condemned that decision, writing, “It should be obvious that this arrest violated the First Amendment," and that, “By arresting Villarreal, rather than solely disciplining the employee for any wrongdoing, county officials took this ‘everyday journalism’ and transformed it ‘into a crime.’”

All of this, noted Ali, comes at a moment when the Trump administration has launched a full-bore attack on the free press, including the Federal Communications Commission moving to curtail political interviews on late-night broadcast shows.

"Journalists have a singular ability to hold the Trump administration and local governments all across the country accountable, through shedding light on what they are doing and how they are wielding their power. Criminalizing this work without consequence doesn’t just endanger those journalists; it threatens everyday Americans who rely on local and national reporting in nearly all aspects of their lives.