A Washington, D.C., resident who was detained last month for following National Guardsmen around while playing “The Imperial March” from Star Wars is claiming in a lawsuit filed through the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. that the force should not have been with the people who arrested him, but with the U.S. Constitution.
“Government conduct of this sort might have received legal sanction a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” the ACLU wrote in its filing, reports The Washington Post on Thursday.
“But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from restraining individuals from recording law enforcement or peacefully protesting, and the Fourth Amendment (along with the District’s prohibition on false arrest) bars groundless seizures,” the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, states.
The detained man, Sam O’Hara, was “tightly handcuffed” and detained for 15-20 minutes, according to the ACLU.
The filing says that an Ohio National Guard sergeant, four D.C. police officers and the District of Columbia infringed on O’Hara’s First Amendment rights and violated district law when they detained him on Sept. 11 in Northwest Washington.
O’Hara reportedly, when he saw National Guard members on the streets that day, followed them while playing “The Imperial March,” also known as “Darth Vader’s Theme,” on his phone and recorded them.
Within two minutes, one of the Guardsmen “turned around and threatened to call the police officers to ‘handle’ Mr. O’Hara if he did not stop.”
But O’Hara kept playing the song, and the soldier called the police to bring him under control.
O’Hara said in an interview Wednesday that the videos he made weren’t intended to mock the National Guard troops but to point out why they were on the D.C. streets.
“I think the men and women who signed up to serve their country did not have this in mind, that they would be policing their fellow citizens,” he said.
“My protest is to make sure that everyone knows that this is coming from the top,” O’Hara added.
“These orders are coming from an administration that seeks to use fear and tactics to make sure their power extends to branches of government where it doesn’t belong,” he said.
The ACLU argued that O’Hara’s detention violated his rights to criticize the Guard’s deployment and the actions of the Trump administration.
“The government doesn’t get to decide if your protest is funny, and government officials can’t punish you for making them the punch line,” Michael Perloff, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of D.C., said in a statement.
“That’s really the whole point of the First Amendment,” he added.
O’Hara said he didn’t think he’d be detained for his actions, but added that he “would not be able to sleep at night knowing that I did not stand up for myself and stand up for my First Amendment rights.”
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