A man from Washington, D.C. has filed a lawsuit after being detained in September for playing a Star Wars theme while following around patrolling National Guard members.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court on behalf of 35-year-old Sam O’Hara. In the suit, his attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union said that he would protest the National Guard’s presence when they patrolled D.C. neighborhoods by playing "The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)" from the movie The Empire Strikes Back.
“Using his phone and sometimes a small speaker, he played The Imperial March as he walked, keeping the music at a volume that was audible but not blaring," said O’Hara’s attorneys in the lawsuit. "Mr. O’Hara recorded the encounters and posted the videos on his TikTok account, where millions of people have viewed them."
The lawsuit alleges that on September 11, a member of the Ohio National Guard threatened to call the Metropolitan Police Department while O’Hara was playing music and recording them. Minutes later, the guard followed through on the threat and O’Hara was placed into handcuffs when the police arrived — preventing him from continuing his protest.
According to the two officers who placed him in handcuffs, O’Hara wasn’t under arrest. He had just been stopped from "harassing the National Guard."
"The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," the lawsuit reads, referencing the Star Wars franchise.
"But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests, and the Fourth Amendment (along with the District’s prohibition on false arrest) bars groundless seizures," the lawsuit continues.
The National Guard was deployed to D.C. in August as part of a federal intervention on crime. Though the emergency period that they were deployed for ended in September, more than 2,200 troops are still there.
