While typically yelling “pig” or even flipping off cops is protected under the First Amendment, William Reece, the teenager in question, made a terrible mistake which experts say rules his arrest constitutional.
Instead of rolling down his window to yell at the Newport Police Department patrolmen, he cracked open his rear-passenger door. This error gave the police the excuse they needed to arrest him "due to creating a hazardous condition that served no legitimate purpose."
“If the arrest had occurred for shouting through an open window, it probably would have been unconstitutional,” Vanderbilt University Law School professor Christopher Slobogin told US News.
Due to the vehicle being in motion when he opened the door, according to the Whren v. United States Supreme Court ruling, his arrest was legal “even if there is good reason to believe the real reason an individual is arrested is because of an exercise of First Amendment rights or animus toward the arrestee, probable cause for a traffic violation immunizes the arrest from constitutional challenge.”
The only exception to this would be if it involved racial discrimination Slobogin told the website.
The police reported that there was also an 18-month-old child in the backseat with the teenager at the time of the incident.
Reece was released on $500 bond the same day.
