A lawsuit seeking bodycam footage and other police records involving a 2024 Labor Day incident at a city-owned building alleging involving Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon can move forward, a judge ruled on March 31.

The plaintiff in the suit, lawyer and Orange Beach resident and "citizen journalist" C.C. Moreno, responded to the news on her Facebook page.

"The city, the mayor and their team of attorneys did not get the neat, quiet little dismissal they were clearly hoping for," Moreno posted.

Of the seven counts alleged by Moreno's suit, three were dismissed — two by Moreno and her team, the other by Judge Jeffery Beaverstock — but the four remaining counts remain actionable according to the ruling. Those four, Moreno says, are the crux of the suit seeking the bodycam footage, reports and radio transmissions from the early-morning incident.

Surviving in the ruling are the public records request for the bodycam footage; a free speech First Amendment claim against the city and Kennon individually; a claim the city followed a "policy or custom of nondisclosure and evidence concealment against the city" supported by a 1983 New York state ruling on free speech; and a "mandamus or injunction against the city" on public records, according to the lawsuit.

"The heart of this case, the part about transparency, suppression, retaliation and whether public officials can manipulate what the public gets to see and say, is still standing," Moreno said in her post. "This was never some harmless little records spat. This has always been about power, control and whether certain people thought they were entitled to operate in the dark while smearing anybody bold enough to ask questions."

The alleged incident Moreno seeks the bodycam footage for happened when Orange Beach police were called to Tiki and Raw Bar at Safe Harbor Sportsman Marina on Terry Cove during Labor Day weekend in 2024 by a bartender leaving work about 1 a.m. on or about Sept. 2-4, the lawsuit states.

Officers were told by the bartender that she saw a naked man beating a woman on the balcony of the city's Coastal Resources office across the boat basin yelling, "Don't you ever walk away from me." Kennon has an office there on the south end of the building, and officers eventually went to the office and knocked on the door. Kennon has previously told GCM the space is open to all city officials.

An audio recording of the incident was uncovered, in which inquiring officers were told "this is Tony Kennon" when they asked for identification. Kennon did not open the door, and police offices did not do a welfare check on the alleged domestic violence victim until days later on Sept. 6, according to reports. Tony Kennon's wife, Paula Kennon, told officers on Sept. 6 she was fine, according to police reports after the welfare check.

The 911 call was one of the major storylines in the municipal election cycle last fall, with opponents to the incumbent mayor since 2008 using the incident to say he was not fit for municipal leadership and Kennon and his family repeatedly taking to social media to discredit what they said were attacks on the family. The incident even made the question lineup at a debate between Kennon and then city councilman Jeff Boyd, who lost his bid for mayor in the August election. Kennon won with nearly 60% of votes.

The mayor told GCM in August he thought the discourse over the situation was one-sided but that he could not, or would not, speak publicly about it.

"It is a complicated story where my wife and I were not able to speak on it in specifics because of police investigations and inquiries," he said via text at the time. "Please note, we were not subjects of an investigation in any way, form or fashion. My wife and I agreed not to speak publicly specific to this issue so as not to compromise any of the inquiries, investigations and not take personnel issues public, as is city policy, but yet everyone is printing a partial story based on leaks. Sounds very political to me."

The city said it cannot release the footage because it involved an ongoing investigation.

"According to Plaintiff, the September 2024 response generated body-worn camera footage but resulted in no arrest, no charges and no contemporaneous investigative case file," the lawsuit alleges. "The subject of the alleged misconduct, Mayor Kennon, exercises supervisory authority over Orange Beach Police Department, the custodian of the footage."

Moreno's suit alleges after making the records request for the bodycam footage, eventually the city, independent of the police department, opened its own investigation and said the bodycam footage was a part of that investigation.

"Plaintiff argues that the city officials and Mayor Kennon improperly invoked an exemption to prevent disclosure of materials that would expose the misconduct of the Mayor Kennon and then 'fabricated an administrative investigation' within City Hall, an office under the mayor's control, to retroactively justify the nondisclosure,'" the lawsuit states.

Moreno alleges the move "offends both procedural and substantive due process."

Federal District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock made the ruling.

Moreno said the lawsuit was still in the discovery phase, so no trial date has been set. 

City Administrator Ford Handley said the city has no comment on the suit.