A federal judge has refused to throw out the civil rights lawsuit filed by a Texas journalist arrested over a satirical Facebook meme and declined to grant qualified immunity to the sheriff and investigator who put him in jail.
Chief US District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled on July 20 that Kolton Krottinger’s suit can move forward against Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds and former deputy James Luckie.
We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.
O’Connor wrote that Krottinger “sufficiently alleged that Luckie and Sheriff Deeds violated his clearly established rights to be free from arrest without probable cause, malicious prosecution, and First Amendment Retaliation.”
The ruling keeps alive claims of First Amendment retaliation, unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution, and Fourth Amendment violations.
Qualified immunity shields officers from suit unless they broke rights already clearly established in law, and it ends most cases of this kind before they reach discovery. O’Connor found that Krottinger cleared that bar.
Krottinger, a 36-year-old Navy veteran, runs several Hood County news pages on Facebook and a nonprofit, Anxiety Solutions of America, that operates a 21-acre ranch for veterans and first responders. Governor Greg Abbott named him an honorary admiral of the Texas Navy in January 2025.
His arrest traces to a satire image posted to a satirical page called Hood County Sheepdogs during a Granbury school board race. The meme made it look as though Tina Brown, a regular speaker at county commissioners’ meetings, had endorsed a candidate she actually opposed. Brown reported the post on October 6, saying she had not made it.
C.J. Grisham, a First Amendment attorney representing Krottinger, said the meme was meant “to poke fun at the two people who can’t stand each other…endorsing that person. That’s the joke of it.”
Hellbound and Down 