The ACLU of Missouri has filed a class action lawsuit against the city of St. Louis on behalf of protesters — alleging the city has retaliated against them for expressing their right to free speech, unreasonably seized them, applied undue force and violated their due process rights with methods including “kettling,” gassing them and spraying them without fair warning
The lawsuit was filed today in federal court on behalf of lead plaintiffs Maleeha Ahmad (who appears on the cover of this week’s RFT and in the photo above after being hit with pepper spray downtown last Friday) and Alison Dreith, who was also pepper-sprayed at the downtown protest. Dreith is also executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri.
Both Dreith and Ahmad were protesting downtown on the afternoon of Friday, September 15. That was just hours after the announcement that former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley had been found not guilty of murder — and well before any of the damage that would result later in the weekend following the end of organized protests.
Neither has been charged with any crime.
“I think everyone deserves the same rights as I do. I just want peace and justice,” Ahmad said in a prepared statement. “If it hadn’t been for my fellow peaceful protestors – strangers who came to my aid — I don’t know how my eyesight would be today. I would have been left out in the sun, on the ground, with my face burning.”