⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

We hear oral argument before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Davis versus Cisneros. The case arises from an October 2020 incident on Interstate 35 in Texas, four days before the general election, when a group of vehicles displaying support for then-President Trump surrounded a campaign bus carrying surrogates for the Biden-Harris campaign. The plaintiffs said the drivers slowed in front of the bus and forced it to brake, and that a collision followed. The campaign called off its remaining stops for that day. The plaintiffs sued under 42 United States Code Section 1985 subsection 3, a Reconstruction-era civil rights statute enacted in 1871 to combat Ku Klux Klan violence. Six defendants went to trial. The jury cleared five of them and found one, Eliazar Cisneros, liable. It awarded ten thousand dollars in compensatory damages to the driver of the bus, and thirty thousand dollars in punitive damages — about forty thousand dollars in all. He is the only appellant here. On appeal, the appellant argues that the district court erred by allowing the claim to proceed without proof of racial or other protected-class animus, and that the statute cannot reach private political confrontations absent state action. The core legal issue is whether the support or advocacy clause of Section 1985 subsection 3 requires plaintiffs to prove race-based or class-based discriminatory animus, or whether it independently protects political campaign activities from private interference through force or intimidation.

Davis v. Cisneros (No. 25-50693) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, argued August 4, 2026.