The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by Texas citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal, leaving in place a divided ruling that she cannot sue local officials over her 2017 arrest for obtaining nonpublic information from police. Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a lone dissent, calling the arrest an obvious First Amendment violation.
Priscilla Villarreal, a Laredo, Texas-based citizen journalist known online as “La Gordiloca,” was arrested in 2017 after she sought and obtained information from a police source and later published it on social media.
Villarreal was arrested under Texas Penal Code § 39.06(c), a provision that makes it a crime to solicit or receive certain nonpublic information from a public servant “with intent to obtain a benefit.” After posting bond, Villarreal challenged the statute in a state habeas proceeding. A Texas trial judge granted relief from the bench, ruling the law unconstitutionally vague as applied in her case.
Villarreal later filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against police and prosecutors involved in her arrest, alleging violations of the First Amendment and other constitutional protections. A federal district court dismissed her claims on qualified-immunity grounds.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit initially revived key parts of Villarreal’s suit, concluding that jailing her for asking questions of a public official was constitutionally impermissible. But the full appeals court later reconsidered the case and ruled that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. The 5th Circuit’s en banc decision was decided 9–7.
In October 2024, the Supreme Court granted Villarreal’s earlier petition, vacated the 5th Circuit’s judgment, and sent the case back for reconsideration in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzalez v. Trevino, a separate First Amendment retaliatory-arrest case from Texas.
On remand, the 5th Circuit again ruled against Villarreal on qualified-immunity grounds, this time by a 10–5 vote, addressing her First Amendment retaliation theory in light of the Supreme Court’s guidance.
On March 23, 2026, the Supreme Court declined to take up Villarreal’s renewed appeal, leaving the 5th Circuit’s ruling intact. Sotomayor dissented alone, writing: “It should be obvious that this arrest violated the First Amendment.” In her dissent, she criticized the use of a criminal statute to treat routine newsgathering—asking a public official questions and publishing information voluntarily provided—as a basis for arrest.
Judge James Ho, who authored the panel opinion favoring Villarreal earlier in the litigation, also dissented from the 5th Circuit’s en banc decision. Ho argued that the arrest ran headlong into settled First Amendment principles and that officials should not be shielded by qualified immunity in those circumstances.
