Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From Black Lives Matter Activist Whose Protest Led to Police Officers’ Injuries
The decision by the Supreme Court means that the officer’s lawsuit will proceed in the district court that originally held that he had no standing.
The Supreme Court will not hear the appeal of a Black Lives Matter protester who allegedly incited a riot which led to a Baton Rouge, Louisiana police officer being hit with a rock during a 2016 protest. The officer claims that the activist, DeRay Mckesson, incited a violent mob to attack him by marching them through the streets.
The officer, John Ford, sued Mr. Mckesson and others, demanding damages for the activists who incited the protest. Mr. Mckesson led the demonstration after the shooting death of Alton Sterling, who was killed by police after he reached for a loaded gun in his pocket.
In a demonstration at Dallas protesting Sterling’s death, five police officers were killed and eleven others were injured.
Mr. Ford’s lawsuit against Mr. Mckesson and others was originally dismissed by a district court judge, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2019 that the lawsuit could go forward because the right to protest does not include the right to incite violence against law enforcement officers. Those who incite such violence can be sued by victims, the appeals court ruled.
Mr. Mckesson was sued by another Baton Rouge officer who claimed that the activist and his Black Lives Matter colleagues incited a riot in 2017 which led to life-threatening injuries being sustained by the officer. That lawsuit was later dismissed.
Mr. Mckesson got his start as a Black Lives Matter organizer and protester after the death of Michael Brown and the subsequent protests at Ferguson, Missouri in 2015. Following that weeks-long protest, Mr. Mckesson became a cause celebre among liberal media outlets, and later hosted a podcast with the outlet Crooked Media, a successful company founded by alumni of the Obama administration.
Mr. Mckesson fell out of favor with many of his colleagues in recent years, however, after he was accused of stealing work from those who were less well-known and not as highly paid. His former podcast co-host, Sam Sinyangwe, accused Mr. Mckesson of stealing the data from their project, Campaign Zero, which mapped incidents of police violence across the country.
