From Stabbin’ Wagon v. City of Medford, a ruling issued on September 30 by Judge Mustafa Kasubhai of the District of Oregon:
The Court accepts the facts as alleged. Stabbin’ Wagon is a Medford-based nonprofit offering clean needles, meals, aid, and outreach services to people experiencing homelessness, with a focus on individuals battling addiction and mental illness. Plaintiff Jones founded and led Stabbin’ Wagon, while Plaintiff Strong was a staff member. The plaintiffs frequently criticized the City’s arrests of unhoused residents and the City’s shortcomings in providing outreach.
Defendants Brian Sjothun, Randy Sparacino, Justin Ivens, Darrel Graham, Geoff Kirkpatrick, Trevor Arnold, Arturo Vega, and John and Jane Does (collectively, the “City Defendants”) are current and former Medford city officials and police officers. The City Defendants publicly criticized the plaintiffs and their needle-exchange initiative. Beginning around 2021, Defendants Graham, Kirkpatrick, and Sparacino monitored the plaintiffs’ social-media activity, protest attendance, and interviews with the press. The City Defendants removed the plaintiffs from police communications that informed local outreach agencies when police swept encampments of unhoused people. Medford police also paused, arrested, and cited Stabbin’ Wagon employees on several occasions from 2020 through 2023.
In 2023, the plaintiffs secured a $1.5 million grant from the Oregon Health Authority (“OHA”) to establish a “respite center” intended to broaden outreach to unhoused individuals. Defendants Sjothun, Ivens, Arnold, and Kirkpatrick attempted to persuade OHA to rescind the grant. The plaintiffs allege that these Defendants “disseminated inflammatory, false, and disparaging information about Plaintiffs to other providers, state officials, and community leaders” in an effort to overturn the award.
Defendant Ryan Mallory is described as a public-safety-adjacent figure in Southern Oregon who operates social-media platforms and firms that investigate, report on, and advise on matters related to law enforcement, including the Medford Police Department. Mallory supported the City Defendants’ bid to reverse the grant. He expressed his opposition to the OHA grant within his Facebook group, which has more than 100,000 followers. His followers commented in agreement, and on September 13, 2023, one follower confronted the plaintiffs while they were working and threatened to call the police. On August 4, 2023, Mallory posted the plaintiffs’ personal information — including home addresses and birth dates — in a graphic styled after “law-enforcement booking records.” On September 7, 2023, Mallory posted a video and a caption urging the public to oppose the OHA grant, including the following:
Unqualified people that fill our Parks in greenways with needles, keep people addicted by promoting drug use, and misappropriate grant money by using it for public protest of the police rather than helping people are about to get a massive paycheck …. Ask for an audit of the stabbin wagon organization…. These folks are intending on renting a building to perpetuate drug use …. Melissa Jones and her marketing director [Sam Strong] have openly stated that they get grant money and use it to protest police and others.
The defendant Mallory and his followers continued posting material that “fomented animosity and disinformation regarding Plaintiffs and their services.” On May 21, 2024, Mallory published an article about Plaintiff Jones’s municipal-court sentencing and commented that she “[d]efinitely hasn’t learned her lesson based on that. Guess we’ll see how probation goes.” In March 2025, Mallory released a video showing needles in downtown Medford and asserted that Stabbin’ Wagon “shouldn’t be in business at all, it worsens the problem.”
Although OHA delayed the grant, it ultimately awarded the funds. The plaintiffs contend that municipal and zoning obstacles and the defendants’ subversion campaign forced them to discontinue their attempt at opening the respite center. Jones and Strong resigned from Stabbin’ Wagon due to the defendants’ “harassment, surveillance, doxing, and retaliatory pressure.”
The court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims related to doxing, criticism, surveillance, and retaliation on several grounds, including lateness, but also added this assessment:
Plaintiffs further claim that the Defendants retaliated against their advocacy by opposing the OHA grant and by publicly and privately disparaging them. They allege that immediately after OHA awarded Stabbin’ Wagon the grant, the City and Medford police — including Defendants Sjothun, Ivens, Arnold, and Kirkpatrick — spread false and misleading information to state officials, community leaders, and other organizations. They contend that the City sought to paint Stabbin’ Wagon as extreme and unqualified, lobbied OHA, and coordinated with other nonprofits hostile to Stabbin’ Wagon, such as OnTrack Rogue Valley and the Addictions Recovery Center.
Courts exercise caution when addressing retaliation claims tied to government speech like these.
Restricting the ability of government decisionmakers to engage in speech risks interfering with their ability to effectively perform their duties. It also ignores the competing First Amendment rights of the officials themselves. The First Amendment is intended to “preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail.” That marketplace of ideas is undermined if public officials are prevented from responding to speech of citizens with speech of their own.
The Ninth Circuit has thus set a high threshold for when government speech can give rise to a First Amendment retaliation claim. For instance, an act of defamation does not establish retaliation if it does not affect the plaintiff’s rights, benefits, or status with the state. Government speech resulting in reputational harm and a resulting loss of employment likewise does not meet the high bar for adverse action….
Nevertheless, false accusations can give rise to a retaliation claim in specific contexts. In Mendocino Env’t Ctr. v. Mendocino County (9th Cir. 1999), police officers falsely accused members of an environmental group of criminal activity during a criminal investigation. The officers issued these false accusations to obtain arrest and search warrants. The Ninth Circuit held that the plaintiffs had adequately pled a First Amendment retaliation claim because the inclusion of the accusations within warrant affidavits permitted the inference that the acts would chill a person of ordinary firmness from future First Amendment activities.
Initially, some of the plaintiffs’ assertions fail because they seek to hold Defendants liable for protected speech. For example, the plaintiffs allege that Defendants Ivens and Arnold “expressed outrage over the award and attempted to mobilize public opposition and influence OHA to rescind the grant.” They also contend that the City depicted “Stabbin’ Wagon as untrustworthy, unqualified, and politically extreme.” These claims are insufficient to sustain a retaliation claim because the government must be allowed to express its own views, even when those views criticize citizens….
Further, the plaintiffs contend that OHA delayed the grant in response to the defendants’ conduct but eventually approved it. Jones and Strong resigned from Stabbin’ Wagon, and the plaintiffs had to close the peer respite program. However, they do not allege that the defendants controlled the grant process, and they conceded this point at oral argument. This defeats their assertion that the defendants “disseminated inflammatory, false, and disparaging information about Plaintiffs.” Cf. Gini v. Las Vegas Metro. Police Dep’t (9th Cir. 1994) (holding that defamatory statements did not give rise to a First Amendment violation where the officials “could not, and did not, make any decision or take any state action affecting [the plaintiff’s] rights, benefits, relationship or status with the state”).
And the court offered this commentary on the plaintiffs’ civil-rights conspiracy claim:
A plaintiff pursuing a Section 1985 claim to vindicate rights secured by the First Amendment must demonstrate that the state was in some way involved in or affected by the conspiracy because the First Amendment protects only official conduct. The remaining allegations allege that unnamed Defendants coordinated “with anti-activist social media groups that published private information and incited public backlash” and that they disseminated “Plaintiffs’ private identifying information, obtained through law enforcement channels, to more than 100,000 followers in order to incite harassment and vigilantism against Plaintiffs.”
Most of these claims point to Defendant Mallory, who is not a City official. Much of the allegations center on Mallory’s speech on social media and other outlets. Digital communications like these typically fall within First Amendment protection. Speech is protected unless it falls into an unprotected category, such as “true threats.” Some of the allegations seek to hold Mallory liable for protected speech and thus fail. For example, SAC [Second Amended Complaint] ¶ 121 (alleging Mallory criticized Plaintiffs’ qualifications). Plaintiffs broadly allege categories of potentially unprotected speech by Mallory (e.g., SAC ¶¶ 129, 131 (harassment); SAC (alleging defamatory statements); SAC ¶ 203.e (incitement). To the extent Plaintiffs seek to hold Mallory liable for these acts, they must tie the alleged unprotected speech to specifics rather than relying on broad legal conclusions.
Plaintiffs also claim Mallory published Plaintiffs’ names and home addresses in a “[b]usted” graphic, mimicking booking-log services. In general, a party cannot sustain a claim for disclosing information that is publicly available and lawfully obtained. Florida Star v. B.J.F. (1989). The Plaintiffs do not allege that their names and addresses were not publicly accessible or unlawfully obtained. Consequently, they have not alleged an overt act by Mallory.
Regarding the City Defendants, the plaintiffs allege that the “City Defendants, notably the Medford Police Department members, were aware of Mallory’s pro-law-enforcement social-media influence.” They further claim that Kirkpatrick and Sparacino appeared on Mallory’s podcast and that the defendants “reached a tacit understanding that Mallory would amplify the City’s retaliation against Plaintiffs.”
Viewed in light of the court’s earlier rulings, these assertions fail to plead the City Defendants’ participation in the alleged disclosure of personal information. A plaintiff must plead a conspiracy with facts that go beyond parallel conduct and shared viewpoints. The court’s finding that the City Defendants’ retaliation claim was not adequately pled forecloses Mallory’s amplified conduct at this stage. The Court thus dismisses the Section 1985(3) claim for failure to allege that “two or more persons conspired” and that a state actor was “at least one of the wrongdoers.”
Stephanie C. Kucera and Zachariah H. Allen (Hart Wagner LLP) and Casey S. Murdock (Frohnmayer Deatherage Law Firm) appear as counsel for the defendants.
