Shane Boor, a 35-year-old Colorado man, was heading to work last April when he passed a trooper on the side of the road issuing a traffic ticket. As he passed, he extended his middle finger in the trooper’s direction.
The trooper went to great lengths to catch him. Accordingly to Boor, the State Patrol were using an airplane for speed enforcement. The officer had the plane followed Boor to his work site and, then, another trooper showed up with the harassment summons.
Boor admitted to flipping the bird stating “I just wanted to make sure that he knew how I felt about what he was doing” and “I thought that I had expressed that.”
The American Civil Liberties Union got involved arguing that, although impolite, Mr. Boor’s gesture amounted to peaceful and symbolic expression of protected free speech. The Colorado State Patrol acknowledged that “giving the finger” is not criminal harassment and has since dropped the criminal case against Mr. Boor.