A Washington DC resident who was detained last month for following a national guard patrol while playing Darth Vader’s theme from the Star Wars films has filed a lawsuit alleging that his constitutional rights were violated.
Sam O’Hara, represented by an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, filed the complaint against four local police officers, a member of the Ohio national guard and the District of Columbia.
O’Hara was protesting against the Trump administration’s deployment of national guard troops by walking behind them and playing The Imperial March, the song used in Star Wars as a theme for Darth Vader and other figures of the hated Galactic Empire.
O’Hara shared his efforts over TikTok.
Before he was detained, one of the national guard members, Devon Beck, said: “Hey, man, If you’re going to keep following us, we can contact Metro PD and they can come handle you if that’s what you want to do. Is that what you want to do?”
Beck then called the police, who handcuffed O’Hara, “preventing him from continuing his peaceful protest”, the lawsuit states.
“The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” the suit states, quoting Star Wars. “But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests, and the Fourth Amendment (along with the District’s prohibition on false arrest) bars groundless seizures.”
O’Hara’s actions chime with other recent humorous protests against Trump’s deployment of the military on US streets and the arrests of people over alleged immigration offenses. Many of the protesters in the recent No Kings marches wore inflatable costumes of frogs, unicorns and other whimsical creatures.
Earlier this month in Portland, the comedian Rob Potylo stood outside an ICE office in a giraffe suit playing a Rod Stewart song and singing, “If you hate brown people, and you are a Nazi, come on ICE, leave Portland.”
Potylo, too, was detained by ICE and has said he plans to sue the agency and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the Daily Beast.
O’Hara, who filed the suit in the US district court for the District of Columbia, has requested that the court rule that the actions taken by the military and law enforcement officers violated his first and fourth amendment rights and that the actions constituted false arrest, false imprisonment and battery under DC law. He also requested that the defendants provide compensatory damages.
The national guard and Washington DC police department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
