The Supreme Court has upheld a ruling that ordered a prefectural government to pay ¥550,000 in damages over the police's removal of a heckler from a stump speech by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2019.
In the decision dated Monday, the top court's First Petty Bench, presided over by Justice Takuya Miyama, dismissed an appeal by the prefectural government of Hokkaido, in the lawsuit filed by 29-year-old organization worker Kio Momoi from Sapporo, finalizing the damages order issued by lower courts. All five justices at the Supreme Court supported the verdict.
According to the June 2023 ruling by Sapporo High Court, Momoi shouted her opposition to a tax hike and to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party while Abe was giving a speech in front of Hokkaido Railway's Sapporo Station in July 2019, ahead of an election for the House of Councilors later that month.
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