Stanton Foundation First Amendment Clinic Files Supreme Court Cert Petition

By: Vanderbilt University, April 11, 2025

Led by student-attorneys Abdullah Ali, ’26, and Logan Paeglis, ’26, the Stanton Foundation First Amendment Clinic at Vanderbilt Law School filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of clients Open Justice Baltimore (“OJB”), Alissa Figueroa, and Brandon Soderberg.

The Clinic’s clients report on police misconduct within the Baltimore Police Department (“BPD”).  As part of their reporting, they each made public records requests under the Maryland Public Information Act for records related to officer misconduct, but BPD repeatedly obstructed disclosure of records to the client group. The group filed suit, alleging First Amendment violations based on content and viewpoint-based discrimination and retaliation against constitutionally protected speech.

Despite robust allegations, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal of the client group’s complaint. In affirming, the Fourth Circuit emphasized so-called “obvious alternative explanations” for BPD’s obstruction. The appellate court settled on “bureaucratic dysfunction” as the reason that the clients received delayed and deficient responses to records requests.

Undeterred by the court’s reliance on a pretextual explanation, Ali and Paeglis identified a split amongst the circuit courts regarding how the burden to either substantiate or negate a defendant’s proffered “obvious alternative explanation” for alleged conduct is allocated between parties, which is the basis of the petition for certiorari.