The Alabama Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of Selma police in a lawsuit filed by Faya Rose Toure, an attorney and longtime political activist from Selma.

Toure sued the city of Selma, former Police Chief Spencer Collier and Officer Devon McGuire over a 2018 arrest for fourth-degree theft and attempting to elude police.

The incident involved a political sign that Toure removed because she said it was posted illegally on public property and what happened after McGuire stopped Toure’s vehicle and asked her to return the sign.

Toure, wife of former state Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, asserted numerous claims, including assault and battery, false arrest, unreasonable seizure, defamation, and others.

In the lawsuit, filed in 2019 in Dallas County Circuit Court, Toure sought compensatory damages of $1 million and punitive damages of $3 million.

Collier and McGuire asked the court for a summary judgment based on immunity as police officers and other grounds.

The trial court denied their motion.

In Friday’s ruling, the Supreme Court reversed that and ordered the trial court to enter a summary judgment on the basis of immunity in favor of McGuire and Collier.

Chief Justice Sarah Stewart wrote Friday’s opinion in the case, and the other eight justices, all Republicans, concurred.

According to Stewart’s opinion, depositions from Collier, McGuire, and Toure, and video from McGuire’s body camera of the incident supported the claim of immunity.

According to Stewart’s opinion, McGuire was in an unmarked patrol vehicle when he saw Toure remove a campaign sign from property adjacent to Tabernacle Baptist Church, place it in her vehicle, and drive off.

McGuire pulled alongside Toure’s vehicle, and asked her to return the campaign sign.

“Toure told McGuire to ‘go to hell’ and drove off, running a red light in the process,” Stewart wrote.

McGuire initiated a traffic stop and pursued Toure for about three and a half blocks before she pulled over.

McGuire’s body camera video captured what happened after the traffic stop, according to the court ruling.

“Throughout the interaction, Toure can be seen purportedly recording the surrounding scene with her cellular telephone, and she made numerous statements indicating her dissatisfaction with officers of the Selma Police Department choosing to detain her,” the court ruling says.

“McGuire stepped away to radio Toure’s driver’s license number in to dispatch, and then he told a group of people on the sidewalk to back up,” the court ruling says.

“After McGuire had walked away, Toure exited her vehicle and walked around while recording and commenting to the officers and to the crowd with statements like: ‘You would think I committed a murder” and “Do y’all see all these cops?’

“While McGuire attempted to place handcuffs on Toure, she continued to turn and resist the handcuffs, and she asked McGuire to handcuff her with her wrists in the front of her body because her wrist had previously been broken.

“McGuire refused, eventually got the handcuffs secured behind Toure’s back, and placed Toure in the back of a police vehicle.”

Toure questioned how she could be charged with attempting to elude for driving only three and a half blocks.

Collier, a former state legislator and former secretary of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, said he had actually written the law on eluding police and that it was a “textbook case.”

Toure submitted to the court a copy of a local ordinance that prohibits posting political signs and posters on utility poles or on public property or rights-of-way.

Toure said she believed the sign had been illegally placed on public property.

Toure said that when McGuire initially spoke to her, he was not in uniform and was in an unmarked police vehicle, she did not know who he was, and had felt “intimidated” by him.

Toure said she did not try to elude but believed that she was facing possible harassment had traveled several blocks to a location where witnesses were present.

The Supreme Court said Collier and McGuire were immune from the lawsuit claims unless Toure could show by substantial evidence that they violated laws or regulations or acted “willfully, maliciously, fraudulently, in bad faith, beyond his or her authority, or under a mistaken interpretation of the law.’”

Toure did not establish either of those exceptions to the immunity for police officers, the court found.

“McGuire was performing a ‘discretionary function within the line and scope of his … law enforcement duties,’“ Stewart wrote.

“As explained above, the evidence McGuire and Collier presented established that McGuire had witnessed Toure take a sign that did not belong to her, which, they testified, constituted fourth-degree theft of property,” Stewart wrote.

“After Toure ignored McGuire’s request that Toure return the sign, McGuire attempted to initiate a traffic stop, which devolved into an arrest after Toure continued driving her vehicle for over three blocks before pulling her vehicle cover — circumstances that Collier testified constituted a ‘textbook case’ of attempting to elude.”

Toure argued that the local ordinance against posting signs on public property implicitly decriminalized her conduct because she removed an illegally placed campaign sign and had no intent to keep it.

But the Supreme Court said the circumstances and evidence supported the claims of immunity.

“Accordingly, we grant McGuire and Collier’s petition and issue a writ directing the trial court to enter a summary judgment on the basis of immunity in favor of McGuire and Collier,” Stewart wrote.

At the time of Toure’s arrest, her husband, Hank Sanders, said in a Facebook post that the city of Selma was taking down Black candidates’ signs and leaving white candidates’ signs on city right-of-ways.

Sanders said his wife complained and wrote a letter to the city, but officials continued removing Black candidates’ signs.