WASHINGTON — A Washington resident filed a lawsuit Thursday after he was handcuffed and briefly detained last month for protesting members of the National Guard patrolling D.C. neighborhoods by playing “The Imperial March” from the “Star Wars” franchise.
In a suit filed in federal court, attorneys for Sam O’Hara, 35, of Washington, said he would regularly protest the National Guard’s presence by walking several feet behind them and playing the march also known as “Darth Vader’s Theme,” from “The Empire Strikes Back,” the second film in the “Star Wars” series, when he saw them in the community.
“Using his phone and sometimes a small speaker, he played The Imperial March as he walked, keeping the music at a volume that was audible but not blaring,” O’Hara’s attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union said in the lawsuit. “Mr. O’Hara recorded the encounters and posted the videos on his TikTok account, where millions of people have viewed them.”
President Donald Trump deployed members of the National Guard to Washington in August in an effort to combat the city’s crime. He has also ordered the deployment of National Guards troops to Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago — though not without legal challenges.
O’Hara’s attorneys said in the lawsuit that on Sept. 11, a member of the Ohio National Guard turned around while their client was playing music and recording them and threatened to call the Metropolitan Police Department. The guard member followed through on the threat minutes later, according to the suit.
When police arrived, O’Hara’s attorneys wrote, they put him into handcuffs and prevented him from continuing to protest.
“The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” the lawsuit says, referring to the opening text of the “Star Wars” franchise. “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.”
The two police officers who arrived said O’Hara wasn’t under arrest, according to the lawsuit. Instead, they told him that he had been stopped for “harassing the National Guard,” the suit says.
In a public incident report that police provided to NBC News, an officer wrote that O’Hara “was later sent on way without further incident.”
Reached for comment Thursday, the police department and the National Guard both said they don’t comment on pending litigation.
Tensions have been high during the surge of federal law enforcement and National Guard troops in Washington. In August, a man who at the time worked for the Justice Department was charged with a misdemeanor for throwing a sandwich at a federal agent. He pleaded not guilty.
Mosheh Gains contributed.
