A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed by a Louisiana police officer charging that the Black Lives Matter movement was responsible for violence that happened at a protest in Baton Rouge in July 2016. According to Salon, Judge Brian A. Jackson ruled that social movements cannot be sued and that activist DeRay Mckesson could not be held liable for the actions of others. The police officer who filed the lawsuit remains anonymous. The lawsuit also took issue with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. "For reasons that should be obvious, a hashtag – which is an expression that categorizes or classifies a person’s thought – is not a “juridical person” and therefore lacks the capacity to be sued," Judge Jackson wrote. "Plaintiff’s attempt to bring suit against a social movement and a hashtag evinces either a gross lack of understanding of the concept of capacity or bad faith."
