An appellate court last year found San Jose leaders violated a person’s First Amendment rights with a rare restraining order that hindered him from filming police officers in public. The city is fighting to keep it in place anyway.
Nicholas Robinson had two convictions overturned in November for violating an unusual restraining order that barred him from filming officers within 100 feet. The ruling by the Santa Clara County Superior Court’s appellate division found that section of the restraining order overly broad — and his convictions were unconstitutional free speech restrictions. However, the appellate court agreed with a trial court’s 2022 verdict on four other counts of violating the order, which centered on profane emails Robinson sent to officers and an incident where he shined a flashlight in an officer’s eyes.
“We conclude that some aspects of the restraining order amounted to an impermissible restriction of Robinson’s First Amendment rights because it was not narrowly tailored and reverse the guilty verdict for two counts,” Judge Thomas Kuhnle wrote in the ruling issued in November…