MEMPHIS, Tenn. (CN) – A federal judge in Memphis ruled Friday that the city’s failure to properly train members of its police department caused it to violate a 1978 agreement not to collect political intelligence on activists exercising their First Amendment rights.
“The failure was one of training and inadequate direction over a sustained period of time,” Senior U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla wrote in a 39-page opinion.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, which brought the lawsuit against the city, hailed the decision as a “tremendous victory for free speech” because residents of Memphis enjoy greater protections that what is guaranteed by the First Amendment due to a 1978 consent decree.
“This uniquely positions Memphis to be a standard-bearer for cities across the country as they wrestle with how to protect individuals’ privacy and free speech in the face of ever-growing surveillance technologies,” Thomas Castelli, legal director for the ACLU of Tennessee, said in a statement.
In his opinion, Judge McCalla said the city violated its consent agreement when it used its real-time crime center to search several social media sites for posts relating to the Black Lives Matter movement “because the information gathered related to First Amendment rights.”
Memphis collected information on non-criminal activity and distributed it through intelligence briefs to other law enforcement organizations and individuals in companies such as FedEx and St. Jude.
In one example, the Memphis Police Department used Facebook under an alias account named “Bob Smith,” which friended activists and joined groups associated with the Black Lives Matter movement in order to monitor them. It also identified three Memphis-based journalists and gathered information on them because of the sources they developed in the movement.
In September 1978, Memphis entered into a consent decree with the ACLU after the city burned its political intelligence files gathered on Vietnam War protesters instead of handing them over.
The agreement barred Memphis from investigating people because of their First Amendment activity. For example, it specifically prevents the city from infiltrating groups exercising free-speech rights or recording names, photographs and license plates of people attending meetings and demonstrations.
The ACLU filed suit last year, asking the court to find the city in contempt of the consent decree after a list surfaced of people that required a police escort while visiting Memphis City Hall, some of whom had no criminal record but were involved with Black Lives Matter.
The original 1970s court case was a major win for the ACLU of Tennessee. Speaking from the witness stand during the first day of the bench trial on Aug. 20, Executive Director Hedy Weinberg said the two most significant cases the organization ever took on were political intelligence in Memphis and the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial.
In Friday’s ruling, McCalla disagreed with the ACLU’s allegation that the city discriminated against people seeking public-assembly permits and harassed individuals. The judge also noted the fault in violating the consent decree did not rest on the police officers themselves.