Supreme Court hears case of Texas grandmother thrown in jail after criticizing city government

Supreme Court justices heard arguments Wednesday in the case of a former Texas councilwoman who was jailed after criticizing a city manager and will now consider whether she can sue city leaders for politically motivated retaliation.

"Hopefully, by taking this case all the way to the Supreme Court, we showed to petty tyrants all across the country that they shouldn't be messing with their critics," Institute for Justice attorney Anya Bidwell told Fox News after arguments wrapped up Wednesday.

Castle Hills, Texas, police arrested then-city councilwoman Sylvia Gonzalez in July 2019 on a rarely used charge of tampering with a public document. Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether she can sue city officials for politically motivated retaliation. (Courtesy Institute for Justice)

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Sylvia Gonzalez is suing Castle Hills Mayor JR Trevino and other officials, alleging they plotted to have her arrested as retaliation for criticizing the city manager, violating her right to freedom of speech. She is represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm.

The city officials invoked qualified immunity, a defense commonly used to shield government officials from liability unless it can be proven that they violated a clearly established constitutional right.

Gonzalez won a seat on the Castle Hills City Council in 2019. The then-72-year-old retiree immediately championed a nonbinding petition calling for city manager Ryan Rapelye's replacement, citing ongoing complaints from residents that he ignored their concerns, particularly when it came to the condition of their streets.

Debate over the issue grew heated, extending Gonzalez's first meeting as a councilwoman through the following day. At the end of the second day, Gonzalez said she straightened up some papers strewn across her dais, put them in her binder and went to talk to a constituent.

'THEY WANTED TO PUNISH ME': FORMER CITY COUNCILWOMAN'S RETALIATION CASE GOES TO SUPREME COURT:

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A police officer interrupted to tell Gonzalez that Trevino wanted to speak with her, court documents allege. Trevino asked where the petition was and asked Gonzalez to look in her binder, saying he could see a clip inside.

Gonzalez said she didn't realize she'd accidentally put the petition in the binder and handed it over. Two months later, she was arrested on a charge of tampering with a public document.

"I didn't even know what I was accused of," Gonzalez previously told Fox News. "I'd never been in jail … and it was very scary to an old lady like me."

She spent the day in jail and had her mugshot splashed across the evening news. The district attorney's office later dropped the charge, but Gonzalez's brief political career was over.

Security video from May 22, 2019, shows Sylvia Gonzalez pulling the petition out of her binder at the request of Mayor JR Trevino and a police officer. The nonbinding petition called for the reinstatement of a former city manager, who Gonzalez and supporters said was more reliable and dedicated to completing street repairs than her successors. (Screenshot via City of Castle Hills Texas/YouTube)

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Her lawsuit accuses Trevino and former Castle Hills Police Chief John Siemens of using the briefly missing petition to launch a criminal investigation. After two other officers found no reason to arrest Gonzalez, Bidwell said the chief assigned his friend Alexander Wright to take over as a "special detective."

Rather than seek a summons for the nonviolent misdemeanor, the special detective took the unusual step of asking for an arrest warrant and going straight to a judge — instead of the Bexar County District Attorney's Office — to do so, the lawsuit claims.

"They wanted to punish me, and they wanted to make sure I went to jail. And they did a good job," Gonzalez said.

She sued Trevino, Siemens, Wright and the city in 2020, alleging they deprived her of her rights under the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court is considering whether a previous case, Nieves v. Bartlett, can be used to shield Castle Hills officials. The Nieves case involved police officers making "split-second decisions," Bidwell said, arguing the same protection from First Amendment lawsuits should not be extended to other government officials who, in this case, took weeks before obtaining an arrest warrant.

Yet, much of attorney Lisa Blatt's argument in defense of the Castle Hills officials centered around protecting police officers.

"If you accept the plaintiff complaint, the officer will always lose," Blatt told the justices. The officer "literally can never arrest without worrying about getting sued."

Mayor JR Trevino, left, and former Castle Hills Police Chief John Siemens are two defendants in Gonzalez' lawsuit. They're accused of plotting to have Gonzalez arrested after she put a nonbinding petition in her binder after a city council meeting. (City of Castle Hills)

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The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that Gonzalez could not prove her arrest was retaliatory because she could not cite cases in which other individuals had not been arrested for actions similar to hers.

Some Supreme Court justices pushed back on that logic.

Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed out that there are hundreds of thousands of federal crimes and statutes on the books and that he "can't imagine how many there are at the state and local level."

"You're saying they can all sit there unused, except for one person who alleges that I was the only person in America who's ever been prosecuted for this because I dared express a view protected by the First Amendment, and that's not actionable?" Gorsuch asked.

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Bidwell said Gonzalez was happy to have her story heard by the nation's highest court.

"Most justices sympathized with Sylvia and what she went through," Bidwell said. "There is a lot of vindication just based on that."