From Tuesday’s resolution of the Texas Court docket of Appeals (Amarillo) in Boes v. State, written by Justice Alex Yarbrough, and joined by Chief Justice Brian Quinn and Justice Larry Doss:
[Following an arrest of Boes for assaulting his then-wife, a court issued an emergency protective order that] prohibited Appellant from the next:
speaking straight with a member of the family of the household or family or with the particular person(s) protected below the Order in a threatening or harassing method; speaking a risk by any particular person to a member of the household or family or to the particular person(s) protected below the Order;
speaking in any method with an individual protected below the Order or a member of the household or family of an individual protected below the Order, settle for by the get together’s legal professional or an individual appointed by the court docket, as a result of the Court docket finds good trigger exists; and
going to or inside 500 ft of the residence of the sufferer.
The order was signed on February 5, 2020. In March 2020, Appellant posted on Fb on not less than three events and “tagged” [his wife]…. The essential inquiry to resolve is whether or not these Fb tags represent “communications” in violation of the protecting order. We maintain below the information offered herein they do….
“Communication” is just not outlined in any of the statutes relevant right here. When a phrase in a statute is just not outlined, it’s ordinarily given its plain which means except the statute clearly exhibits the phrase is utilized in another sense. “Communication” is outlined as “a course of by which data is exchanged between people by a standard system of symbols, indicators, or habits”; an “alternate of knowledge”; “data communicated”; “data transmitted or conveyed”; a verbal or written message.” …
“[T]agging” … create[es] a hyperlink to a selected Fb pal who have to be chosen to obtain notification of a tag…. The posts admitted into proof reveal Appellant’s transmission or conveyance of knowledge or a written message ample to represent “communications.” Conflicts within the proof, if any, had been finally resolved in opposition to Appellant and we should defer to the jury’s decision of these conflicts in favor of the prosecution. We discover the proof was ample to help Appellant’s conviction for violation of a protecting order….
I’ve argued that felony harassment legal guidelines and comparable court docket orders could generally permissibly limit undesirable speech to an individual—”communications with a protected particular person,” within the court docket’s phrases—however not speech about an individual (except it is in any other case constitutionally unprotected, as an illustration is libel or a real risk of unlawful conduct). This resolution, as I learn it, primarily treats tagging as speech to an individual, because the similar put up may have simply talked about Boes’s then-wife with out tagging her, and the perform of the tagging seems to have been exactly to make it extra seemingly that Boes will obtain notification of the message.
The State was represented by Daniel Sakaida.
