California Supreme Court Overturns Warning on LAPD Complaint Forms – CalMatters

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Warning people see before filing complaints against Los Angeles police officers creates barrier to free speech Supreme Court of California ruled today in a long-running lawsuit over the language.

The The Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in favor of the city of Los Angeles and against the union representing its police officers, finding that the warning detailing the penalties for filing false documents had the potential to deter “citizens from filing truthful (or at least not knowingly false) complaints of police misconduct.”

The warning exhibits “numerous characteristics that, taken together, sufficiently burden a protected form of speech — namely, truthful (or at least well-intentioned) complaints of police misconduct — so as to require heightened constitutional scrutiny,” Justice Joshua Groban wrote in the majority opinion.

The decision involved a 1995 law that sought to create consequences for false claims against police officers: Anyone who files a complaint against an officer can face criminal charges if they knowingly sign a false report.

LAPD officials went further, requiring applicants to confirm in bold and all-caps that they understood the potential penalties.

“IT IS AGAINST THE LAW TO FILE A COMPLAINT YOU KNOW TO BE FALSE,” the LAPD form reads.IF YOU MAKE A COMPLAINT AGAINST AN EMPLOYEE YOU KNOW IS FALSE, YOU MAY BE PROSECUTED FOR CRIMINAL CHARGES.“

The court found that the warning was biased in favor of the police because witnesses who give false testimony in defense of an accused officer would not be charged with perjury.

“Although the Legislature had a legitimate and substantial interest in redressing the harmful effects of abuses of false allegations of police misconduct, (the law) is not narrowly tailored to achieve those goals,” Groban wrote. “Instead, the statute establishes an ill-defined, asymmetric penalty provision that is accompanied by an unusual warning requirement.”

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing Los Angeles police officers, argued the form was constitutional and necessary to prevent false complaints that would end an officer’s career.

The ruling overturned a California appeals court ruling in that case and a 2002 California Supreme Court ruling in a related case, both of which agreed with the police union that the warning passed constitutional muster.

California’s law is already consistent with multiple federal court decisions that have found that the warning violates the First Amendment.

In dissent, Associate Justice Goodwin Liu said the law and the warning were “no more unconstitutional than laws that make it a crime to testify perjury, file a false police report, file a false document with a public agency, or lie to a public official in an official matter.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.