A judge on Wednesday threw out an indictment against an Arizona mother who was arrested at a city council meeting for criticizing a public official, calling her arrest “objectively outrageous.”

Maricopa County Judge Gerald Williams dismissed with prejudice the trespassing charge against Rebekah Massie. On August 20, the mayor of Surprise, Arizona, ordered a police officer to arrest Massie during the public comment section of a city council meeting after Massie criticized a proposed raise for the city attorney. The mayor claimed she violated a rule prohibiting complaints against city officials during public comment, and when she refused to stop speaking, he had her forcibly removed and arrested.

“No branch of any federal, state, or local government in this country shall ever attempt to control the content of political speech,” Williams wrote in his resignation letter. “In this case, the government did so in a way that was objectively outrageous.”

After her arrest, Massie immediately applied for one First Amendment Trialwith representation from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), alleging that the City Council’s speech policy was unconstitutional and that city officials unlawfully retaliated against her, violating her First, Fourth and 14th Amendment rights.

However, the threat of prosecution hung over her head.

“For more than two months, I have lived with the threat of punishment and imprisonment – ​​even being taken from my children – for doing nothing but criticizing the government,” Massie said in a FIRE press release. “Free speech is still important in America, and I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have people on my side standing up for our rights with me.”

Massie is a community activist and founder of a non-profit organization, The big failurewhere she advocates increased transparency and improvements to the infrastructure in the city. She was represented in her criminal case by Bret Royle, an attorney at Feldman Royle.

“Rebekah should never have been detained, let alone criminally charged, for speaking her mind,” Royle said in the release. “It’s the kind of thing that happens in tyrannical countries but should never happen here. No American should go to jail for exercising their freedom of speech, and we’re relieved the court agreed.”

The Supreme Court has held that criticizing public officials, even if they use rude or vulgar language, is core First Amendment protection. In public forums—such as when a city council invites public comment—governments can create reasonable limits on the time and manner of speaking, but they cannot discriminate against certain viewpoints.

Nevertheless, similar cases of small-town tyrants are emerging.

Last year, for example, an Iowa man filed a First Amendment lawsuit after he was arrested twice for criticizing his city’s police department during City Council hearings. The city council had a policy similar to Surprise’s ban on “derogatory statements or comments about any individual.”

In 2022, FIRE also sued on behalf of residents of Eastpointe, Michigan, who were shouted down and prevented from speaking by the city’s mayor during a public meeting. The city apologized and rescinded its policy limiting comments “directed at” elected officials.

The judge’s decision to dismiss the charge against Massie with prejudice means prosecutors can never return it. State prosecutors argued unsuccessfully that Williams should not be watching video of Massie’s arrest, showing that she repeatedly and correctly claims the city’s policy is unconstitutional.

“The defendant should not have been prosecuted once for expressing his political views,” Williams wrote. “The court agrees that she should never be prosecuted for expressing her political views on that date at that time again.”

Conor Fitzpatrick, a FIRE attorney, said in a press release that Massie’s lawsuit against Surprise will continue: “We want to make it crystal clear to governments across the United States that brazen censorship of people and betrayal of the First Amendment comes with a cost.”

The City of Surprise did not immediately return a request for comment.