6th Circuit rejects $600,000 award in Tracie Hunter lawsuit

A federal appeals court has ruled that a woman and her attorneys should not have been awarded nearly $600,000 in a lawsuit related to her actions a decade ago in the Tracie Hunter case.

In an opinion filed Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit overturned the jury’s $35,000 award, as well as $546,000 in attorney fees, that had been awarded by the federal judge overseeing the trial.

Vanessa Enoch, then a doctoral student, was arrested in 2014 while reporting on the case against Hunter, who was facing criminal charges for alleged misconduct as a Hamilton County juvenile court judge. Enoch is currently running for Ohio’s 8th congressional district.

Enoch was a reporter for the Cincinnati Herald, a weekly publication, and was doing research for her doctoral program. After a June 2014 hearing at the Hamilton County Courthouse, Enoch went into the hallway outside the courtroom and used her iPad to take photos of Hunter, her attorney and others, the ruling said. Hunter’s former bailiff, Avery Corbin, also took photos with an iPad.

In the hallway, they were met with sheriff’s deputies, who told Enoch and Corbin that they were prohibited from using recording equipment in the hallway without permission from a judge. Both were charged with disorderly conduct, and Enoch was also charged with failing to identify himself to police.

The charges were eventually dropped, but Enoch and Corbin filed a lawsuit that went to trial in federal court in 2022. A jury found that the officers violated Enoch’s First Amendment rights. The jury, however, found that Corbin’s rights were not violated.

The 6th Circuit held that the right to attend court proceedings does not give one the “unconditional right to record those proceedings or the events in the courthouse hallways.”

According to the Public Prosecution Service, Enoch could not demonstrate that her arrest was the result of anything other than ‘a reasonable, content-neutral restriction of freedom of expression’.

Hamilton County District Attorney Melissa Powers said in a statement that the appeals court’s ruling confirms her office’s position that the lawsuit was without merit from the beginning.

Powers said her office’s civil division saved the county from being forced to pay more than half a million dollars in “wrongfully awarded costs and damages.”

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