Airport didn’t violate free-speech rights, court rules
Suit centered on arrest at Sunport
Phillip Mocek’s acquittal on disorderly conduct charges failed to persuade an appeals court that the city, airport police and security screeners should be civilly liable for arresting him without probable cause and violating his protected free-speech rights.
The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals last week affirmed a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Browning dismissing the civil lawsuit that Mocek, through the First Amendment Project, filed in federal court over his 2009 arrest in Albuquerque.
Mocek, a Seattle resident, in 2009 refused to show identification to Transportation Security Administration officers at the Albuquerque International Sunport and began filming his interactions with TSA and city Aviation Police.
Aviation Police officer Robert Dilley began escorting Mocek out of the airport and arrested him when he told Dilley he did not have any identification, said he would remain silent and asked for a lawyer.
Mocek was cleared at a Metropolitan Court trial, after which he sued based on alleged freespeech and free-association violations, among other claims.
Browning dismissed the officers and the city from the lawsuit, saying in a January 2013 opinion that news gathering at an airport screening checkpoint was not a clearly established right.
Mocek appealed, claiming Dilley lacked sufficient evidence for an arrest.
The appeals court said New Mexico law “is not entirely clear on whether someone in Mocek’s shoes might be required to answer basic questions about his identity, such as a request for his address.” But the court said Dilley was entitled to qualified immunity.
It also said an airport is a nonpublic forum “where restrictions on expressive activity need only ‘satisfy a requirement of reasonableness.’ ”
As for claims that the city was liable for injuries to Mocek for unconstitutional policies, the appeals court said a municipality is not liable solely because its employees cause injury. In a federal civil rights claim, the court said a plaintiff must show a direct link between an alleged unconstitutional policy and the claimed injury through deliberate conduct, and Mocek had failed to do that.
Finally, the court said officers had established probable cause for an arrest based on concealing identity even if they did not have probable cause for three other charges — resisting an officer’s lawful command, disorderly conduct and criminal trespass.