A federal judge has denied a motion by the city of Baton Rouge and its Police Department to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an online news outlet alleging city officials discriminate against “bloggers” when releasing information to the media.
The news website Unfiltered with Kiran and Kiran Chawla filed the lawsuit against the city of Baton Rouge and Police Chief Murphy Paul last year. In August, federal Judge John de Gravelles of the Middle District of Louisiana rejected a motion by defendants to dismiss the case, but de Gravelles also called on the plaintiffs to file an amended complaint to fix possible deficiencies.
City officials consider Chawla a “blogger” who has no right to access city information on par with credentialed media, according to the lawsuit. The complaint lists numerous incidents when Chawla was treated differently than other members of the press, including her expulsion from a press conference held by the Baton Rouge Police Department and attended by several reporters from other news outlets.
A spokesman for the Mayor’s Office declined to comment on the pending litigation, but an Aug. 11 court order on the motion for dismissal says the defendants argued that the plaintiffs failed to show their First Amendment rights were violated, that the police chief is entitled to qualified immunity and that plaintiffs have no viable claim to recover attorney fees or other costs from the local government.
Despite obtaining credentials as an individual member of the Louisiana Press Association (the website Unfiltered with Kiran is not an LPA member), Chawla continued to be denied timely access to public information released by the defendants, according to the lawsuit.
“It should not matter if it’s a legacy newspaper, a new online outlet or a resident,” the LPA executive director, Jerry Raehal, told the Louisiana Record in an email, “open government should be open.”
The lawsuit argues that the defendants should be restrained “from denying (the) plaintiffs co-equal access to and timely access to public information in the same manner and time as afforded other news outlets upon their requests.”