The Supreme Court is set to hear Wednesday the case of a former city council member in Texas who says she was arrested for pushing for the removal of the city manager.
Sylvia Gonzalez says she hopes a court victory will make it easier for others to run for office without fear of being criminally targeted and silenced.
“I don’t want people to be stifled and be fearful to run for office. I want to clear the road for the person who comes after me,” Ms. Gonzalez, a retiree in her late 70s, said Tuesday in an interview. “I want them not to have the same problem I had. I want them to be unafraid to run for office.”
She lost her city council seat after she was arrested for misplacing a petition she had circulated criticizing the city manager and calling for his removal.
Ms. Gonzalez was put in jail for a day after she misplaced the petition in her binder at a council meeting for a few minutes. The petition was discovered at the end of the meeting, and officials charged her with attempting to conceal a government document that she had spearheaded.
The district attorney eventually dropped the charges. But Ms. Gonzalez lost her council seat representing Castle Hill, a town of just under 4,000 people. Her mug shot was circulated on local news.
Ms. Gonzalez said she believes she was targeted because city leaders wanted to replace her with their friend, the incumbent whom she had defeated in an election in which she promised to work to replace the city manager.
“They wanted to punish me and they wanted to make sure I went to jail,” she said in the interview. “The city didn’t want to do what the residents wanted. What they should have been doing is representing the people.”
The legal dispute first began after Ms. Gonzalez won an election over an incumbent more than four years ago on the promise to unseat the city manager, claiming he was involved in corrupt practices. She organized a “FIX OUR STREETS” petition and moved to reinstate the previous city manager.
At her first council meeting, a constituent presented the petition, which caused chaos. The meeting had to be continued to another day, and during the debate, Ms. Gonzalez inadvertently placed the petition in her binder, according to her court papers.
Mayor Edward Trevino and other individuals launched an investigation and eventually had her arrested on a misdemeanor charge of “intentionally destroy[ing], conceal[ing], remov[ing], or otherwise impair[ing] the verity, legibility, or availability of a government record.”
Ms. Gonzalez claimed in court that the statute had never been used in the past 10 years to jail someone for any sort of similar conduct. She found that in Bexar County, Texas, the law had been used against those falsifying green cards, concealing evidence of murder and counterfeiting government records and Social Security numbers.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ms. Gonzalez because she couldn’t point to an example of another individual who was targeted for similar political conduct and misplacing a similar petition or government document.
The three-judge panel reasoned that for her to be able to sue the individuals, she needed to show another person — like herself — who was engaged in the same kind of actions but not arrested in order to reveal unequal treatment.
According to court records, other circuit courts do not require exact proof or other examples of retaliatory and differential treatment.
The high court decided to review that lower court’s reasoning in Ms. Gonzalez’s case.
Attorneys for Mr. Trevino and other defendants detailed in the filing did not respond to a request for comment.
In court records, they argued the investigation into tampering with a government record was thorough and qualified immunity applied.
Lawyers for the mayor and other officials say a neutral judge issued the arrest warrant for Ms. Gonzalez, so that does not support her retaliatory arrest claim.
“The judge found probable cause based on a warrant application that detailed witness statements and security footage capturing the theft,” the lawyers wrote. “If probable cause ordinarily dooms retaliatory-arrest claims, going the extra mile to investigate and obtain a warrant should be dispositive.”
The case is Sylvia Gonzalez v. Edward Trevino et al. A decision is expected by the end of June.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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