Court revives lawsuit filed over Texas journalist’s arrest

By KEVIN McGILL
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit filed by a Texas online freelance journalist. Priscilla Villarreal said officials in Laredo, Texas, violated her constitutional rights when they arrested her in 2017. She was arrested for alleged violation of a little-known Texas law governing the seeking of “non-public” information. The court record says she had published identities of a person who killed himself and of a family involved in a fatal accident — information she got from police. A federal district judge tossed her lawsuit but it was revived Monday by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.