Journalist Maya Lau, co-represented by Loevy + Loevy, sued LA County for unlawfully investigating her in retaliation for her reporting.
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California has ruled that Los Angeles County must face journalist Maya Lau’s lawsuit alleging that the county unlawfully investigated her in retaliation for her reporting about police misconduct.
In a recent 10-page order, Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California denied the county’s attempt to dismiss the First Amendment lawsuit, concluding that “Lau has plausibly alleged that [the county] violated her rights.” The judge added that “a reasonable jury could find that, by referring Lau for criminal prosecution, [the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s] conduct had the objective effect of chilling speech.”
Garnett’s ruling is an important step forward for journalists seeking to protect their First Amendment rights.
“It should be common sense that journalism isn’t a crime,” Lau said. “But few courts have had the chance to make clear that a retaliatory investigation of a journalist violates the Constitution. For a federal judge to affirm my foundational First Amendment claim sets down an important marker for all reporters.”
Lau, an award-winning former journalist with the Los Angeles Times, sued the county and former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva in May after learning that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spent three years criminally investigating her after she published an investigation uncovering a list of hundreds of sheriff’s deputies with histories of misconduct, including sexual assault, fabricating evidence, and using excessive force. Villanueva had asked the California attorney general to prosecute Lau for crimes including “theft of government property,” but the attorney general declined to prosecute, citing “insufficient evidence” that Lau committed any crimes. Lau, who is represented by attorneys from the civil rights law firm of Loevy + Loevy, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes, LLP, argues in the lawsuit that Los Angeles County violated her rights under the First Amendment by launching a criminal investigation in retaliation for her newsgathering activities.
Judge Garnett’s order advances the case against the county to the discovery stage, where Lau and her attorneys will have the opportunity to obtain information that could shed light on exactly how LASD officials went about secretly investigating the journalist for her reporting.
“I only learned that the Sheriff’s Department had been criminally investigating me due to intrepid reporting by my former Times colleagues, years after I left the paper. What else do we not know about the Sheriff’s Department’s investigation? What tactics are detectives using against journalists?” Lau said. “I am glad we are in a position to further expose the Department’s actions and put Villanueva’s potential misconduct on record.”
More broadly, the judge’s holding sends an important message about the value of press freedom at a time when journalists and their sources are increasingly vulnerable to retaliatory government investigations.
At the federal level, the Reporters Committee and other press freedom advocates have called on lawmakers to reintroduce federal shield legislation that would provide essential protections for journalists and the public’s right to know. The Federal Communications Commission, for its part, has launched an inquiry into “news distortion” at CBS over the network’s 2024 interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, over the objections of the Reporters Committee and other press freedom groups that the inquiry threatens to intrude on editorial independence.
In the states, too, attorneys general have increasingly used investigative powers to target speech. In Texas, for example, the state’s attorney general launched an investigation into Media Matters for America in 2023 after it published an analysis observing that the social media company X had placed ads from major brands alongside white nationalist and antisemitic content. This year, a federal appeals court affirmed a lower-court decision that found the attorney general’s demand for records violated the nonprofit’s First Amendment rights — a result the Reporters Committee urged in a friend-of-the-court brief — emphasizing that “bad-faith use of investigative techniques can abridge journalists’ First Amendment rights.”
Judge Garnett’s order reinforces the same principle. And while the judge’s order granted qualified immunity to the individual officers named in Lau’s complaint, dismissing them from the case, Los Angeles County still faces liability for the overreach Lau alleges — and Villanueva, along with the other individuals who had been named as defendants in the case, still face the prospect of being deposed and producing discovery in the case.
“Qualified immunity lets too many officials escape accountability for their misconduct, but we’re glad the court refused to let the county off the hook and made clear that investigating a journalist for doing her job violates the First Amendment,” said Reporters Committee Staff Attorney Grayson Clary. “We look forward to pursuing our challenge to the county’s unconstitutional practices.”
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