A Jackson County Community Justice parole and probation officer has been dropped from a former Jefferson Public Radio reporter’s civil rights lawsuit stemming from her arrest on the job at Medford’s Hawthorne Park in 2020.

But April Fonseca, who reports under the name April Ehrlich, may face off against Medford police and city officials in a jury trial pending the outcome of a summary judgment ruling surrounding Ehrlich’s claims of First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights violations, false arrest and battery that occurred Sept. 22, 2020, according to recent filings in U.S. District Court in Medford. Ehrlich was arrested while covering the dismantling of a large unauthorized tent camp that had formed at the park after the Almeda Fire.

On Sept. 10, each of the three parties in Ehrlich’s case signed a motion agreeing to dismiss parole and probation officer Anna Stokes for her role assisting Medford police in the arrest of Ehrlich. Lawyers representing the county, city and Ehrlich reached the agreement in a hearing conducted by telephone Aug. 26.

Senior Deputy Jackson County Administrator Joel Benton declined to comment on the case, citing a standard practice of not commenting on litigation.

In a July 2 motion for summary judgment, the county claimed that Stokes’ role in the arrest was “minimal” and protected by qualified immunity. The arrest involved Medford Sgt. Steven Furst grabbing Ehrlich’s right elbow while Stokes grabbed her left arm. Medford Officer James Barringer then grabbed her right arm and she was handcuffed, according to the initial complaint and the county’s motion for summary judgment.

Ehrlich’s complaint filed Sept. 20, 2022, and earlier news reports claimed that Stokes had kicked her during the arrest. According to a motion for summary judgment filed by the county in July, Stokes testified in a deposition that she did not kick Ehrlich and “would never kick somebody.”

Stokes testified that it was possible her foot touched Ehrlich’s to position herself in a way that supports an arrest.

“And when you’re in the middle of arresting someone … it’s not always graceful,” Stokes testified.

The city had directed media outlets covering the sweep to stay in a designated staging area, but Ehrlich did not comply. She was arrested beneath the viaduct on charges of trespass, resisting arrest and interfering with police while interviewing campers and covering the sweep.

Ehrlich was vice president of the board for the greater Southern Oregon Society of Professional Journalists at the time of her arrest, and news of her arrest prompted condemnation from SPJ Oregon “in the strongest possible terms,” and was logged by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

The city of Medford dropped Ehrlich’s misdemeanor charges of trespassing and resisting arrest in September 2022. The Washington D.C.-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — which among its 48 members include ACLU of Oregon, Gannett, NBC Universal Media, the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association and Paul Westhelle, the executive director of Jefferson Public Radio — claimed they urged prosecutors to drop the criminal charges in a trio of letters to city officials.

Medford City Attorney Eric Mitton, when reached for comment, said that the city filed a motion for summary judgment seeking to dismiss the case on June 28, and provided the Rogue Valley Times a copy of the pending motion filed in district court. Mitton highlighted in his email that the city “relies upon a long line of existing case law holding that reporters are not allowed to enter property closed to the general public to gather information.”

The motion highlights, among others, the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Houchins vs. KQED, which determined that there is an undoubted right to gather news, but the right only extends to gathering news from “any source by means within the law.”

The city seeks to argue that the First Amendment does not guarantee the press to a constitutional right of special access to information not available to the general public, and that the U.S. Constitution and First Amendment give reporters “no greater right” to access locations or information not available to the public at large, according to the motion filed by the city’s lawyer, Andrea Coit of Eugene-based law firm Hutchinson Cox.

Regarding reporters’ ability to access active police operations, the city’s motion cites as precedent the 1980 judgment in Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, which determined that the First Amendment requires only that “the media’s right of access be at least equal to that of the general public.”

“Thus, the conditional protection Plaintiff (Ehrlich) claims to have had on Sept. 22, 2020, was to enter a location closed to the public, during a police operation, to gather information that she may later report to the public,” Coit wrote.

An emailed request for comment to Ehrlich’s lawyer, Jason Kafoury of Portland-based Kafoury McDougal, was not immediately returned Monday.

Ehrlich is suing on grounds of alleged violations of her First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights related to freedom of the press, freedom of speech, unlawful search and seizure, false arrest and battery. The complaint asks that a jury “be allowed to consider punitive damages to deter this conduct and similar conduct by the defendants and others similarly situated in the future,” along with her costs, expenses and reasonable attorney fees.

If Ehrlich’s case survives the city’s motion for summary judgment, a civil trial is scheduled to start Feb. 24, 2025, in U.S. District Court in Medford. U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarke will preside over the five-day jury trial.