The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied Tuesday the appeal of Texas citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal, who claimed that her arrest for misuse of information was unconstitutional. Villarreal had brought a civil rights claim against the city of Laredo, Texas over her 2018 arrest.

Villarreal, known online as “La Gordiloca,” is a citizen journalist in Laredo, Texas. She reports daily through a Facebook page followed by over 211,000 people and is known for her expletive news reports on traffic, politics, and local happenings.

In 2018, Laredo police arrested Villarreal after she posted about an ongoing investigation regarding the suicide of a federal law enforcement agency employee. Villarreal reported on the suicide based on information given to her by a source in the Laredo Police Department, Officer Barbara Goodman. At the time of the report, the information had not been released to the public, and Goodman was an official city information reporter. In her post, Villarreal included sensitive information, including the name of the decedent and the location of the incident, before city police had cleared the information for public release.

Villarreal was charged under Tex. Penal Code § 39.06(c), which prohibits the solicitation of official information that has not been made public. The criminal court ultimately dismissed the charge, stating that the provision was unconstitutionally vague.

Following the dismissal, however, Villarreal sued the officers who conducted her arrest, claiming that the arrest was unconstitutional under the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable seizures and under the First Amendment protections for free speech and press. The Fifth Circuit heard the case on Tuesday upon appeal, and denied both claims.

Regarding the Fourth Amendment, the court noted that Villarreal did not satisfy her burden to show that the arrest was based on an unreasonable belief of wrongdoing. Additionally, regarding her First Amendment claim, the court opined that the police officers in this case have qualified immunity, and cannot be sued for arresting Villarreal when they did not violate her “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right. The court said:

Villarreal cites no case, nor are we aware of one, where the Supreme Court, or any other court, has held that it is unconstitutional to arrest a person, even a journalist, upon probable cause for violating a statute that prohibits solicitation and receipt of nonpublic information from the government for personal benefit. Under the normal standards of qualified immunity, no “clearly established law” placed the officers on notice of Villarreal’s First Amendment right not to be arrested.

Villarreal told several news outlets that regardless of the decision, she would keep fighting the issue. She said, “I’m disappointed but I’m going to keep up the fight for my rights and those of all Americans.”