Over the Labor Day weekend, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit announced that it will hear oral arguments on Nov. 16 in Phoenix concerning one of the most significant First Amendment cases in recent memory — the vindictive prosecution of award-winning journalist Michael Lacey.

Watch: “How the feds destroyed Backpage and its founders”

Federal and state authorities hounded Lacey, the former executive editor of Village Voice Media, and his business partner, the late Jim Larkin, for more than a decade over their First Amendment-protected publication of speech in Backpage.com, the classified advertising website they co-owned.

The pursuit culminated in a 100-count indictment against Lacey, Larkin and several others brought by the DOJ in July 2018. Though Lacey and Larkin sold Backpage in 2015, they were arrested at gunpoint, their homes raided and their assets seized.

Read: Lacey’s opening appeal brief

At least in theory, all speech is presumptively protected by the First Amendment. Regardless, the feds took down Backpage without a legal proceeding, eradicating millions of legal classified advertisements posted by U.S. citizens. The feds later sold the domain, which is now, ironically, a sex cam site.

The multi-year battle that followed the indictment involved four judges, two trials, one mistrial, the wholesale destruction of evidence by the government and the prosecution’s smearing of the defendants with false allegations of sex trafficking, though no such charges were ever filed, nor could they ever have been filed.

Driven to despair, Larkin committed suicide on the eve of the second trial in 2023.

After eleven weeks of proceedings — during which the defense was hamstrung by judicial rulings preventing First Amendment arguments — the jury delivered a mixed verdict, finding two defendants not guilty, convicting two others on multiple counts, including money laundering and Travel Act offenses, and finding Lacey guilty on just one count of international concealment money-laundering.

The jury was hung on multiple counts regarding Lacey, and the government has vowed to retry him on these.

Lacey’s appeal hinges on the fact there was no concealment and no “laundering.” He legally transferred money overseas, on the advice of his attorneys, after federal officials harassed U.S. banks into spurning him as a client.

The IRS was advised of the transfer of funds, as required by law, and all tax returns were filed and taxes paid. Importantly, the government failed to prove that these monies were the proceeds of illicit acts.

Lacey, now 78, was sentenced to five years and served several weeks in federal custody before the Ninth Circuit ordered him released,  finding that his appeal raised substantial questions of law or fact, which, if determined in his favor, are likely to result in reversal on the single count of conviction.

Although released from prison, Lacey remains on house arrest.

His co-defendants, both in their 70s, are each serving 10-year sentences in prison. Their appeals raise numerous issues, including that their convictions are inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.

The trial judge also improperly allowed prosecutors to argue that Backpage execs knew the website was “facilitating” prostitution because they were “on notice” that ads on the site had been associated with prostitution.

Conversely, she blocked the defendants from offering evidence that the company’s lawyers and several federal and state court rulings gave them every reason to believe the site was operating lawfully.