U.S. Supreme Court hears Texas case on politically motivated arrests

Sign up for The BriefThe U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in a Texas case in which a former council member sued the city of Castle Hills, arguing that she was arrested in retaliation for criticizing the city manager.

Weeks later she was charged with tampering with government documents, a misdemeanor, and held in Bexar County Jail. The charges against Gonzalez, who was the city’s first Latina council member, were later dropped. Gonzalez’s legal team maintained that the council member’s case met the exception in Nieves. They argued that the tampering statute was normally reserved for making fake green cards or Social Security cards — not for briefly misplacing a document. The flimsiness of the charge, Gonzalez’s lawyer argued, was evidence of retaliation.

Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed skepticism toward Blatt’s argument. He asked about the many statutes on the books that are never enforced. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who wrote the majority opinion in the Nieves case, was hesitant to expand the exception outlined in that decision.

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