Supreme Court backs Secret Service arrest of man confronting Cheney [View all]

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Source: LA Times

Supreme Court backs Secret Service arrest of man confronting Cheney


WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court shielded two Secret Service agents from being sued for having arrested a Colorado man who confronted former Vice President Dick Cheney on the street and said his “policies on Iraq are disgusting.”

The justices said citizens are not protected from a “retaliatory arrest” if police or federal agents have probable cause to take the person into custody.

In the Cheney case, a judge said the agents had reason to arrest Steven Howards, the protester, because he had bumped the vice president.

“This court has never recognized a First Amendment right to be free from a retaliatory arrest that is supported by probable cause,” said Justice Clarence Thomas. Such a right was certainly not “clearly established at the time of Howards’ arrest,” he added.

Public officials are usually shielded from lawsuits for carrying out their duties unless they violate a constitutional right that is understood and “clearly established” in law.

The decision was unanimous, although Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer did not join Thomas’s opinion. They said they voted to shield the Secret Service agents because they had a duty to make “singularly swift, on the spot, decisions” to protect the lives of high officials.

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Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-supreme-court-backs-secret-service-arrest-of-man-confronting-cheney-20120604,0,5913692.story