A US federal district court judge on Friday granted a preliminary injunction to plaintiffs alleging that federal officers violated protestors’ free speech rights in summer protests in Portland, Oregon.
The lawsuit was originally filed in July by two Oregon state lawmakers, Janelle Bynum and Karin Power, legal observer Sara Eddie, as well as the First Unitarian Church of Portland and the Western States Center, a watchdog organization that monitors acts of right-wing extremism. They filed the complaint against the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Protective Service, and the U.S. Marshals Service, alleging that officers of those agencies violated both protestors First Amendment right to protest and the Tenth Amendment separation of powers between the federal government and the states. Judge Michael Mosman rejected the plaintiffs’ Tenth Amendment claim, but ruled in favor of their First Amendment claim.
The complaint cited President Trump’s unilateral deployment of federal officers to Portland to quell protests this past summer following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and quoted some of the President’s tweets to that effect. The plaintiffs accused federal officers of “indulg[ing] the President’s whim” and of “abducting suspected protestors off of Portland streets – even though such protestors were acting peacefully.” They wanted the court to permanently enjoin federal officers from seizing and arresting protestors without probable cause and to not engage in any law enforcement activity other than the “immediate defense of federal personnel or property.”
Judge Mosman took the president’s tweets into account when he issued his decision granting a preliminary injunction, stating from the bench that he thought they “satisfy the requirement of a substantial risk of future harm.” He held that the plaintiffs had demonstrated potential retaliation by officers against protestors based solely on their exercise of their First Amendment rights, and ordered the parties to come up with rules of engagement that would prevent “violent or aggressive law enforcement activity against entirely peaceful protesters.”
This is one of a number of investigations and lawsuits regarding violent activity by federal personnel against protestors, journalists, and bystanders in Portland.
