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You Have The Right To Free Speech: Retaliatory Arrests And The Pretext Of Probable Cause, Katherine G. Howard

Georgia Law Review

An important question about an individual's First
Amendment freedoms arises when a citizen or journalist is
arrested while verbally challenging, filming, or writing
about police actions. Did the police officer have legitimate
law enforcement reasons for the arrest, or was the arrest in
retaliationfor engaging in First Amendment activities the
officer did not like? Courts have grappled with the best
way to resolve this question, often importing the Fourth
Amendment's bright-line rule about probable cause into
analyses of FirstAmendment retaliatoryarrest claims and
barringthose claims were the officer had probable cause to
arrest. This Note argues that when retaliatory arrest
claims …