A misdemeanor case in Minnesota that has gone viral is raising important questions about the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
Brian Karalus, the defense attorney in the middle of it all, joined Liz Collin on her podcast. He represents Shiloh Hendrix, the Rochester woman who has now been convicted of one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
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The case stems from an incident last year when Hendrix was at a playground with her young child and saw a boy going through her diaper bag. Hendrix used the N-word—and was then confronted by a man who was recording her on his phone. The man used the same racial slur while taunting Hendrix to say it again.
Hendrix faced two misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges for saying the word. A jury acquitted her of the disorderly conduct charges involving the child at the center of the 2025 confrontation while convicting her on a separate count involving the man who recorded the encounter.
While this is a misdemeanor case, Karalus says it should matter to every American.
“The reason it matters is because this is a very, very, very unique case. The state decided to prosecute my client, Ms. Hendrix, for speech, which is almost unheard of,” Karalus said.
Karalus pointed out how “there are so many historical landmark cases that have been argued and decided at the United States Supreme Court, the Minnesota Supreme Court, and it has been long-settled law that speech is protected no matter how vile, no matter how offensive, racist, offensive, crude, ugly, vulgar. I mean, it’s the United States of America. Regardless of what your opinion is or how your feelings might be hurt by awful or ugly language, we protect it here.”
Karalus said his client wanted the media and live video cameras in the courtroom.
However, as Karalus explained, the state “strongly objected to having cameras in the courtroom. I argued for transparency.”
“Let the people of Rochester and Minnesota, and frankly, the United States of America, let them see. Let’s put this out there for everyone to see what’s going on here,” Karalus said.
Not defending what she said, but her right to say it
Karalus also pointed out that while he was defending Hendrix, he was not “defending the language she used.”
“Ms. Hendrix’s case, from start to finish, was not defending the speech, [but] defending her right to use that speech,” Karalus said.
Karalus described the man who recorded his client, Sharmake Omar, as a “Somali male Karen.” Omar was previously charged with sexual assault of a minor. However, the charges were dismissed.
“We’ve got a Karen harassing my client so he can make this or try to make this go viral. And of course it goes viral and he makes all this money off of it,” Karalus said of Omar.
“He takes the video, and what does he do? He goes and finds two fake Somali parents and gets them to go to the police. They go to the police and they claim they’re the parents. There’s a few problems with this because their child’s five years old and the child involved in this is nine years old. But they went there and pretended they were the parents, and this was done with the cameraman,” Karalus alleged.
‘This whole thing was an absolute shakedown’
“This is the civil rights, civil liberties case of the century so far, and to imagine that it all started with a person, we won’t get into his past … this case was started by a shakedown by someone trying to look for money and presented two fake parents and a fake child,” Karalus continued.
In his closing argument last week, Karalus stated: “We have become a country that demands agreement instead of tolerance. We confuse offense with injury, we mistake disagreements for violence. We don’t answer speech with better speech anymore. We demand silence. That’s not America. America was built on a more difficult principle, a more courageous principle. That we can hold two thoughts in our minds at the same time. We can say a word is ugly and still defend another person’s right to say it.”
“I have a front row seat to the de-evolution of the United States and certainly of the state that I love, the state of Minnesota,” Karalus told Alpha News. “As a criminal defense lawyer, we’re in a unique position to see how these types of issues start to become so pervasive, how they start to erode our institutions, where we start to see them in the legal system. And it scares the hell out of me, to be honest.”
Karalus said that he plans to file an appeal on behalf of his client.
“We have a lot of issues, from the judge’s conduct to the prosecutor’s conduct to certain evidentiary rulings. I mean, the GoFundMe ruling alone is, in my opinion, preposterous,” Karalus said. “But the real issue still is free speech. [She was] harassed by a person with a camera at a playground who goaded her to say it, and then said, ‘We’ll see you on the internet.'”
Liz Collin
Liz Collin is a multi-Emmy-Award-winning investigative reporter, news anchor, and producer who cares about Minnesota. She is the producer of The Fall of Minneapolis and Minnesota v We the People documentary films, and author of the Amazon best-selling book, They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and The Death of George Floyd. Her work has prompted important state laws. Yet perhaps most of all, Liz has been giving a voice to the truth—and helping others tell their stories—for more than 20 years.
Dr. JC Chaix
Dr. JC Chaix is an editor, educator, and an expert in media studies. He wrote and directed the Alpha News documentary "The Fall of Minneapolis" and "Minnesota v We the People."
