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This week, the Supreme Court effectively shielded the nation’s law enforcement from consequences when it treats journalism as a crime. In rejecting an appeal in Villarreal v. Alaniz, the court has allowed local officials in Texas to remain immune from prosecution for arresting a journalist who published information she received from a government official. This case presented a strikingly simple question: Does it violate a journalist’s First Amendment rights if they are arrested for requesting and publishing information that a government employee willingly hands over? A lower court split sharply over the answer, but this Supreme Court, given the opportunity to weigh in to help settle the law and protect the freedom of the press all over the country, decided that the best answer was no answer at all, refusing to take up the case. In response, a single justice, Sonia Sotomayor, wrote a scathing critique of the court’s decision to abstain and of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ atrocious ruling protecting local police who had clearly trampled over a journalist’s First Amendment rights by arresting her.

The case of Villarreal v. Alaniz has been ping-ponging through the courts since 2019, when it was first filed by Priscilla Villarreal. She is a citizen journalist based in Laredo, in south Texas, and is considered a muckraker, a 10th grade dropout who became a journalist to cover the ins and outs of the southern border, which is a focal point of her community. Her tactics were unconventional, often including livestreaming the news from her pickup truck to a now-defunct Facebook page as it was happening. In a town of roughly 260,000, her “news on the move” operation garnered about 100,000 followers. In 2019 the New York Times declared Villarreal “the most influential journalist in Laredo.”

Things took a sharp turn for her in 2017, when she was arrested at her home for allegedly violating section 39.06(c) of the Texas Penal Code. The obscure law bans a person from soliciting or receiving nonpublic information from a public servant by means of their office or employment with the intent to obtain a benefit. It had been enacted 23 years earlier and had never once been enforced, presumably because officials recognized that it would violate all sorts of First Amendment protections, perhaps most notably the freedom of the press. Yet Laredo officials used it against Villarreal when, six months before her arrest, she texted a source she had developed within the Laredo Police Department to confirm the names of the victims in two separate incidents, a suicide and car accident. City officials argued that she received a “benefit” from this exchange of information—an increase in popularity on Facebook.

Villarreal was released on bond, and a judge dismissed her charges, declaring the Texas statute unconstitutionally vague. However, Villarreal fought back with a lawsuit demanding damages. She alleged that all the Laredo officials involved in her arrest had violated her First Amendment rights and were retaliating against her over her earlier reporting. The case spent years locked in court battles, with a district........

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