Justin Pulliam Lawsuit: First Amendment Win in Fort Bend County

In March 2026, a federal judge ruled that Fort Bend County, Texas, sheriff’s personnel violated independent journalist Justin Pulliam’s First Amendment rights, awarding him roughly $75,000 and ordering the sheriff’s office to stop discriminating against reporters who publish on social media. The Justin Pulliam lawsuit, filed in federal court after two 2021 run-ins with the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office, tested whether a YouTube journalist holds the same constitutional protections as a reporter for a television station or newspaper. The court held that he does.

Pulliam runs a YouTube channel called Corruption Report, where he posts footage of police encounters and local government in Fort Bend County. The channel had more than 100,000 subscribers as of early 2026.¹ The sheriff’s office media relations policy, however, explicitly excluded social media journalism from its definition of “media.”² That policy sat at the center of the case.

The Two 2021 Incidents

On July 12, 2021, Pulliam went to an open-air press conference at Jones Creek Ranch Park in Richmond, Texas. Sheriff Eric Fagan ordered deputies to remove him, telling them: “If he don’t do it, arrest him, ’cause he’s not a part of the local media, so he have to go back.”³ Deputies moved him about 85 feet away, out of earshot of the briefing.²

Five months later, on December 21, 2021, Pulliam was filming a mental health welfare check in Damon, Texas. He started at a gas station about 130 feet from the residence. A deputy told him to move across the street, and he began walking away, then stopped to keep filming after mental health advocates arrived. Sergeant Taylor Rollins showed up and, within roughly 60 seconds, ordered Pulliam to leave.⁴ Other civilians remained at the scene, but Rollins arrested Pulliam as he was walking away.¹

He was charged with interference with public duties, a Class B misdemeanor, and strip-searched at the jail.⁵ Deputies seized two cameras, a cellphone, an external battery, recording equipment, and two storage devices. Most items came back in January 2022. The sheriff’s office kept his body camera, memory cards, and cellphone, saying they contained evidence, and later conditioned their return on a liability waiver Pulliam refused to sign.⁶

The criminal case went to trial in March 2023 and ended in a mistrial after five of six jurors voted to acquit. Prosecutors dropped all charges on May 15, 2024.⁶

The Federal Civil Rights Suit

On December 5, 2022, the Institute for Justice filed Pulliam v. Fort Bend County, Texas, et al. (Case No. 4:22-cv-04210) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The suit named Fort Bend County, Sheriff Fagan, Rollins, and other deputies. It alleged violations of the First Amendment (free speech and retaliation), the Fourth Amendment (unlawful arrest and seizure), and Fourteenth Amendment equal protection.⁵

The core argument was straightforward: the government cannot decide who counts as a journalist, and a reporter who publishes on YouTube has the same First Amendment protection as one who publishes on a network.⁵

The 2024 Summary Judgment Ruling on the Press Conference

In September 2024, the court ruled that Sheriff Fagan violated Pulliam’s free speech and equal protection rights when he had him removed from the July 2021 press conference. The court called the exclusion a speaker-based restriction that singled Pulliam out because the sheriff’s office did not consider YouTube journalism to be real media, and it found the distinction failed strict scrutiny. Fagan was denied qualified immunity because the right of journalists to access a public forum without arbitrary exclusion was clearly established.³

The March 2026 Ruling on the Arrest

On March 27, 2026, Judge George C. Hanks Jr. issued a final judgment on the retaliation claims tied to the December 2021 arrest. The court found that Rollins lacked probable cause and that the arrest was “motivated by Rollins’s hostility towards the content of Pulliam’s speech” and carried out “in retaliation for the exercise of his First Amendment rights.”¹ Judge Hanks wrote that “speech alone does not constitute the offense of interference with public duties” and that Pulliam “did not cross the line between filming the police and hindering the police.” The court further found that Rollins had acted “in furtherance of an unconstitutional policy of intimidation and exclusion.”⁷

The court declined to award additional damages for the press conference incident, ruling that Fagan had taken adequate remedial steps: he apologized, added Pulliam to the media list, and instructed deputies to allow the public to record police activity.² At trial, Fagan testified that he had been wrong to exclude Pulliam and had not understood at the time that social media journalists held the same First Amendment protections as traditional reporters. Pulliam’s attorneys noted that the department’s written media policy, dated December 29, 2022, still did not officially include social media journalists.⁸

What Pulliam Won

The court awarded Pulliam a total of $75,753:⁶

$30,000 for lost revenue
$15,000 for reputational harm, humiliation, and mental anguish
$22,730 in attorneys’ fees from his criminal defense
$6,023 for data backup expenses
$1,444 for equipment replacement costs

The money is only part of the ruling. Judge Hanks also entered an injunction against the sheriff’s office’s 2022 media policy and ordered that the county cannot treat “reporters using social media differently than reporters using traditional reporting media.” The sheriff’s office must add Pulliam and any other requesting journalist to its media distribution list for press releases and event announcements, and the sheriff must require every patrol deputy to allow the public to record police activity. The court also ordered the return of all equipment the office still held from the 2021 arrest. Judge Hanks wrote that the injunction was “necessary to prevent future constitutional violations, ensure fair treatment, and remedy the past violation of Pulliam’s constitutional rights.”²

Why the Ruling Matters

The Fifth Circuit recognized a First Amendment right to record police in Turner v. Driver (2017), but courts have generally left open the practical questions: how close a person can stand, what counts as interference, and how much discretion officers have to move people back.⁹ The Pulliam ruling addressed that gray area directly, holding that speaking and filming from a reasonable distance is not interference with public duties under Texas law, and that a government agency cannot draw a line between “real” journalists and social media journalists when deciding who gets access to public briefings.

The Institute for Justice frames the case as part of a broader challenge to the use of minor or pretextual charges to punish speech. Its related work includes a Louisiana man awarded $205,000 after an arrest tied to a Facebook post, the raid of a newspaper in Marion, Kansas, and the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Gonzalez v. Trevino, which expanded plaintiffs’ ability to bring retaliatory arrest claims even when officers can point to probable cause for some offense.¹⁰

Where Things Stand

As of mid-2026, neither Fort Bend County nor Rollins had appealed. The case docket showed activity through June 18, 2026, with no notice of appeal.¹¹ Rollins, a sergeant at the time of the arrest, had been promoted to lieutenant by the time of the final ruling, and available reporting does not indicate any internal discipline.⁷ Sheriff Fagan narrowly won reelection in November 2024 by fewer than 1,000 votes.¹²

1
Institute for Justice. Federal Court Rules That Fort Bend County Lieutenant Taylor Rollings Arrested Independent Journalist Justin Pulliam in Violation of the First Amendment
2
U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Texas Journalist Barred From Briefing by Sheriff Files Civil Rights Suit
3
Institute for Justice. Fort Bend Order and Memorandum and Recommendation
4
Institute for Justice. Fort Bend County Drops Criminal Charges Against Citizen Journalist Arrested for His Reporting
5
Institute for Justice. Fort Bend Retaliation
6
U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Texas Journalist Files Suit Following Arrest, Equipment Seizure
7
Fort Bend Star. Federal Judge Finds for Citizen Journalist Against Sheriff’s Office, Awards Him $70K
8
Fort Bend Star. Trial Pits Social Media Journalist Against Fort Bend Sheriff’s Office
9
Columbia Human Rights Law Review. Codifying the Right to Record Police
10
Institute for Justice. First Amendment Retaliation
11
CourtListener. Pulliam v. Fort Bend County, Texas
12
ABC13. Fort Bend County Election Results Runner Ask Recount Sheriff’s Race Won Eric Fagan