An attorney cannot pursue First Amendment retaliation claims against a police officer who searched her private Facebook records to prosecute her criminal trial because she filed the suit within one year of learning about the reasoning for the search, not the date of the search itself, a federal appellate court ruled.
In a July 31 opinion, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed a statute-of-limitations ruling against Connie Reguli, a civil rights attorney who sued Brentwood, Tennessee, and its police department. Reguli brought civil rights violation claims against the defendants after investigators obtained a warrant to search her Facebook posts in an underlying criminal investigation because of her “critical commentary” about police. Evidence from that warrant in part led to Reguli’s custodial interference conviction, though it was later overturned and dismissed, the opinion said.