A South Carolina woman who received a 4-year prison sentence for participating in a Black Lives Matter protest during the summer of 2020 is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review her case.
Brittany Martin is a Black woman, mother, chef, and activist who joined protests in Sumter following the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd. Local police arrested her after five days of nonviolent protest, and she was convicted of the South Carolina state crime of “breach of peace of a high and aggravated nature.” She was sentenced to four years in state prison. She was pregnant at the time of her conviction and gave birth to her daughter, Blessing, while incarcerated, prompting nationwide outrage and shows of solidarity. On Friday, July 11, Ms. Martin filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court.
“I am praying that this case be overturned. This is a battle to exercise and uphold our constitutional rights,” said Brittany Martin. “They’ve got to give us some justice and let us know that we still have our First Amendment right to freedom of speech in this country. My case would be the perfect example of that.”
The ACLU of South Carolina has represented Ms. Martin since April 2023, arguing that Ms. Martin’s conviction for engaging in non-violent protest violated the First Amendment and that her four-year prison sentence for that illegal conviction was an outrage. The South Carolina Department of Corrections released Ms. Martin on November 27, 2024. She remains committed to fighting for justice in the courts and in her community.
“South Carolina’s conviction of Brittany Martin is yet another moment in a long and shameful history of the State using criminal enforcement to silence dissent. In multiple 1960s Civil Rights-Era cases, the Supreme Court had to intervene to correct South Carolina’s unconstitutional actions, and we have asked that it do so again here,” said Meredith McPhail, Staff Attorney for the ACLU of South Carolina.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals refused to consider Ms. Martin’s First Amendment arguments on appeal, ruling that they were not properly raised at trial. The petition asks the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review of Ms. Martin’s case and to clarify that procedural rules—like the one invoked by the SC Court of Appeals—cannot excuse state appellate courts from conducting the careful, independent review that the Supreme Court has long required in First Amendment cases. The court will now decide whether to take up the case.
“Courts play a critical constitutional role in protecting individuals who express viewpoints that are unpopular with government officials and majority sentiment,” said Cecillia Wang, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “In 1963, the Supreme Court stepped in to protect the First Amendment rights of Black civil rights protesters who were prosecuted and convicted in South Carolina for the same offense, for doing what Brittany Martin did in 2020. It’s time for the Supreme Court to reinforce the courts’ role in protecting freedom of speech.”
The petition highlights a lack of consistency in how different state courts decide whether to review constitutional facts in First Amendment cases like Ms. Martin’s. Because juries tend to reflect local majority opinions, courts have long held that independent appellate review is necessary to protect unpopular speech.
The arguments in this petition rely on a long record of court cases upholding the right to protest, including the landmark 1963 case Edwards v. South Carolina, which overturned the criminal conviction of Black students who were arrested on a breach of peace charge after refusing to disperse from a protest.
For more information and previous filings in Brittany Martin’s case, see the ACLU-SC case page for The State v. Brittany Martin.
