The U.S. Postal Service is being sued by a California screen printer for marking and delaying a shipment of Black Lives Matter masks.
The company alleges the face coverings, which were in boxes labeled “Stop Killing Black People” and “Defund Police,” were being sent to protect protestors during the civil unrest of 2020 from the then raging COVID-19 virus, but because they were impeded many people were placed in harm’s way.
On Wednesday, June 1, the federal lawsuit, obtained by Atlanta Black Star, named the United States Postal Service, United States Postal Inspection Service, and other officials in their individual capacities as defendants, alleging the owner’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when authorities improperly seized the boxes without probable cause, a warrant, or even reasonable suspicion.
Four boxes containing 500 masks each were purchased by Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) and were supposed to be sent to Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, and other cities like Washington D.C., St. Louis, and New York on June 3, 2020. The shipments were held up at the Post Office for more than 24 hours and then stamped “Seized by law enforcement” before being sent on their way.
The sender of the items said he saw a “Seized by Law Enforcement” alert on the Postal Service’s website after trying to track the packages when they did not arrive on time. He learned, with the assistance of his legal team and the Freedom of Information Act requests, his packages had been impeded and inspected by the Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of USPS.
The First Amendment was levied in the lawsuit alleging officials seized the masks because of the message printed on them.
The business owner, René Quiñonez, is being represented by the Institute for Justice. The lawyers write in the lawsuit, “… Postal officials did not have reasonable suspicion—let alone probable cause and a warrant (or probable cause and exigent circumstances)—when they seized four properly addressed and neatly taped brown boxes sent to various cities by René Quiñonez and Movement Ink LLC.”
Because of this act, the lawyers say their client’s “rights to political speech stymied,” and the company has “lost the goodwill and business relationships they earned over a decade of building community trust based on their activism and their quality products—costing them the opportunity to do substantial business not only with the recipients of the masks but other existing and potential partners too.”
Quiñonez doubled down on this sentiment in an interview with NBC News, saying his business is rooted in supporting grassroots activism. He declared, “For us as an organization, as a company, and as part of our community, our intent was to support the many activities that were going on across the country.”
The plaintiff, his family, and a minimum of a dozen employees and volunteers “worked around the clock” to create and package the masks, days after Floyd’s death with the hopes that activists would have the protective gear by the first week of June 2020, the claim stated.
It further alleged the brand had previously carved out a place in the marketplace to service boots on the ground activists by establishing rapport “with activist movements, organizations, nonprofits, and individual organizers, who relied on René and Movement Ink for various screen-printing needs.”
He alleged in the lawsuit (and in interviews) because of the singling out by authorities and the post office, some activists are skeptical about working with his company. At least three groups, the claim states, stopped working with the print shop.
“When there’s an organization or a company that now has a reputation for being a target of law enforcement, people don’t want to do business with them,” Quiñonez bemoans. “Even the people that are like-minded, that know that there are fundamental flaws in the way that we address things, they need to protect their interests. So, we lost business.”
“[It] created a pall of suspicion, distraction, uncertainty, and confusion around René and Movement Ink,” the complaint further iterates.
The “baseless seizures and searches,” the lawsuit states, caused significant emotional and mental distress “not just because of his and Movement Ink’s financial and reputational hits, but because he and Movement Ink have been effectively shut out of a movement and a community that they spent (and continue to spend) years investing their time and energy in.”
“Instead of focusing on printing and shipping political Covid-protective masks and other apparel, René and Movement Ink had to waste time figuring out why their innocuous packages were in the hands of law enforcement, and how to get them released, while also fielding questions, concerns, and even accusations from partners, community members, and social media commenters,” the lawsuit reads.
“René, Movement Ink, and their partners were left wondering why these Covid- protective political masks were in the hands of law enforcement officials instead of on the faces of political protestors.”
While the Post Office has not released a formal response to the lawsuit, many politicians have objected to the seizure.
In a letter to California Rep. Barbara Lee, the USPS likened the seizure to a drug bust, stating, “[the boxes] were detained solely because the external physical characteristics of the parcels were consistent with parcels in other non-related instances that were confirmed to contain nonmailable matter, specifically controlled substances.”
Institute for Justice attorney Jaba Tsitsuashvili said, “Government officials should not be permitted to interfere with personal property without some basis to believe that it poses a risk to public safety.”
Tsitsuashvili continued, “Government officials should not be permitted to interfere with political messages, regardless of their content, or the viewpoint that they express, especially on matters of vital public importance. But all of that happened in this case and those violations have real-life consequences.”
Quiñonez remains flabbergasted at this invasive ordeal, stating that even two years later, the business has still been impacted. His lawyers contend that most cases like this are never followed through because of how hard it is to win. One reason is because the factors that go into why something is seized by the government are vague and left to the discretion of officials.
His only resolve, fueling his fight in this lawsuit is simple, to get justice.
“The fact that our government can just seize private property — either because of just general suspicion or because they know it’s political commentary — that’s a scary reality.”
