Lozman v. Riviera Beach (17-21)
argument 17-21Lozman v. Riviera Beach
Supreme Court of the United States
59 min
6 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 5 days ago
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What is the constitutional basis for claiming First Amendment retaliation in Lozman v. Riviera Beach?
You'll hear argument next in case seventeen twenty one, Lozman versus the city of Riviera Beach. Ms. Carlin.
Thank you, Mr Chief Justice, and may it please the Court. The government violates the First Amendment whenever it retaliates against someone because they exercise criticize public policies or public officials. And this is so even when the retaliation takes the form of an arrest for which there's probable cause. Section nineteen eighty three, by its terms, provides an action at law, that is a damages action, any time someone is deprived of a right secured by the Constitution, and that statute should apply here. This Court should not adopt a construction of Section nineteen eighty three that essentially lets defendants escape liability for First Amendment violations by claiming that they didn't violate the Fourth Amendment as well.
Our case shows why an absolute bar rule is an unacceptable reading of Section nineteen eighty three and of the First Amendment. The case involved core First Amendment activity, a lawsuit protected by the Petitions Clause, and a series of criticisms of public officials and public uh public.
That was true of Hartman too, but the court um made a distinction.
The distinction in Hartman, as I understand it, Justice Ginsburg, comes and rests entirely on the fact that there was absolute prosecutorial immunity for the actor who actually imposed the injury there. And I see three major distinctions between Hartman and what's going on in this case. The first of those is that in Hartman there was absolute prosecutorial immunity, and what that meant is you couldn't not sue the prosecutor. You had to sue somebody upstream. But the reason why there's absolute prosecutorial immunity, as this Court explained in the decisions it cited in Hartman, in Reno and in Wayt, is because the Court wants to avoid inquiry into prosecutorial decision making. And that's so because prosecutors are both independent and deliberative.
Absolutely none of those factors is present in this case. You needn't look at anything a prosecutor has done. The decisions here were not made by independent actors. They were made by a police officer and by a city council member whose level of animus on the record shows that this was not an arrest about anything that occurred in the courts in the council chamber that day.
Your beginning I I couldn't quite Can't quite recall your beginning sentence, but it was hugely broad. Any time. Uh there's an arrest for First Amendment protective speech. There's a violation of the Constitution. Something to that effect. Um І it seems to me that um one of the difficulties in this case is that there are any number of hypotheticals you have. You have a Uh people that are fighting in the bar and then Uh the policeman has to get some order and the the the one of the p more um uh Difficult. Uh Uh suspects of says something bad to the police when he arrests him. Under your view, that's a violation.
No.
That that seems uh I'm I'm very concerned about police officers. Um in in difficult situations where they have to make quick And your and your initial formulation just did not cover just did not give any protection for that. In this case there is a very serious contention. Uh that Uh uh people in in elected office uh deliberately wanted to uh intimidate uh this person. Uh and it seems to me that maybe in this case we should cordon off or box off what happened here. uh from the ordinary conduct of police officers. And your initial formulation Right y uh y uh uh w was was so blanket that it didn't provide for that.
I I think maybe I y I didn't state it clearly enough. Our position is that when an officer retaliates against someone for his protected speech, that is when he has what this court called in Hartman retaliatory animus and can't show because of the Mount Healthy. standard that he would have arrested the person anyway, then there is a First Amendment violation. And if I could point to uh the empirical evidence here, the city cites six cases. The State of Alaska on page 17 of its brief cites seven it cites twenty seven cases in the Ninth Circuit.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the constitutional basis for claiming First Amendment retaliation in Lozman v. Riviera Beach?
0:00–6:42
2
How does the Court distinguish Lozman’s case from the Hartman precedent on prosecutorial immunity?
6:42–14:01
3
Why do the parties argue that the police officer’s animus, not probable cause, should drive liability?
14:01–22:36
4
What role do qualified immunity and the Mount Healthy standard play in this dispute?
22:36–30:14
5
How do the parties use Ninth Circuit case law to support their positions on probable cause relevance?
30:14–36:36
6
What are the arguments for and against an absolute bar rule on First Amendment retaliation claims?
36:36–44:30
7
How do the Justices’ hypothetical scenarios (e.g., riots, bar fights) affect the Court’s analysis?
44:30–52:03
8
What remedy does the petitioner seek, and why does the Court consider probable cause only a factor, not a dispositive bar?
52:03–59:43