Today we finally received a ruling in the Woolsey v. Ojeda civil rights lawsuit. Here is the order we just now received from the federal judge:
Woolsey v. Ojeda, Memorandum Opinion and Order, January 30, 2019
The federal court found that Richard Ojeda was acting under color of law when he went on his Facebook Live tirade against my client, and also that by doing so in response to my client posting a critical video, if true, it was a violation of my client’s First Amendment rights:
In sum, under the facts pled in Plaintiff’s complaint, the totality of the circumstances points to a conclusion that Defendant acted under color of state law in both posting the response video to his official Facebook page and making a phone call to Plaintiff’s employer in an effort to have Plaintiff fired. Defendant’s motion to dismiss the complaint on this basis is therefore DENIED.
….
Plaintiff has demonstrated that in response to the video Plaintiff posted, Defendant contacted Plaintiff’s employer in order to pressure the owner to fire Plaintiff. Accordingly, Plaintiff has adequately pled a First Amendment violation, and Defendant’s motion to dismiss the complaint on this basis is DENIED.
This is a huge win for the constitutional rights of individual citizens, and is on its way to establish a new benchmark on the application of First Amendment rights to politicians and social media…..
This is a great ruling. I think it is also why he dropped out of his Presidential bid…;)