A federal judge on Monday dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought by the parents of Manuel Paez Terán, the environmental activist killed during a 2023 law enforcement raid in the woods of DeKalb County, Georgia.

U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg concluded that the Georgia State Patrol troopers who shot Paez Terán used deadly force that was "objectively reasonable in response to Paez Terán initiating gunfire."

That single finding tells you everything about why this case collapsed. The activist, known by the alias "Tortuguita," fired first. A trooper was hit and injured. The troopers fired back. A federal judge examined the facts and found the officers acted within the law.

The ruling ends one legal front in a saga that has consumed Atlanta politics for over three years, but the broader fight over the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, branded "Cop City" by its opponents, is far from over.

What the judge actually found

According to The Hill, the lawsuit, filed by Paez Terán's parents, Joel Paez and Belkis Terán, argued that the troopers created the conditions that led to their child's death. Judge Grimberg laid out their theory plainly:

"Plaintiffs argue that Paez Terán's death was proximately caused by Defendants' actions in planning the raid on the park and arresting and firing pepper balls at the decedent, and that, but for Defendants' preceding actions creating a 'dangerous and volatile' situation, Paez Terán would not have died."

Grimberg rejected that framing entirely. He wrote that Paez Terán fired at troopers and injured one of them, that the troopers had reason to fire back, and that they were within their right to use pepper balls on Paez Terán's tent. The judge also noted that Paez Terán was engaged in criminal trespass at the time.

Even the parents' own lawsuit acknowledged that Paez Terán "panicked" and "fired a gun several times from inside a tent." When your own complaint concedes your decedent shot at police, the civil rights theory has a structural problem.

The "Cop City" campaign and its wreckage

The January 18, 2023 raid targeted demonstrators who had encamped in the woods near the construction site of the 85-acre Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. Activists had occupied the area for months, and the protest movement attracted national attention from the environmental and police-abolition left.

What the movement also attracted was arson. In 2023, masked activists torched police cars and construction equipment, prompting a massive racketeering indictment against over 60 demonstrators. The "Cop City" label was always a tell. Framing a police training facility as an occupation implies that law enforcement itself is the enemy. The movement's escalation from protest to property destruction to, in Paez Terán's case, shooting at officers confirmed what that framing invited.

Fulton County Judge Kevin Farmer previously dropped the racketeering charges against dozens of those demonstrators in connection with rallies against the facility in late December, determining that Attorney General Chris Carr's charges required Governor Brian Kemp's signature under the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law. A procedural hiccup, not an exoneration, though you can expect the distinction to be lost in every future retelling.

The accountability question runs one direction

Attorneys for Paez Terán's parents said after the ruling that "they are being denied the accountability they deserve" and that "the records of their child's death still have not been publicly released." They indicated the family would review all legal options.

Notice what's absent from that statement: any acknowledgment that their child shot a law enforcement officer. The word "accountability" carries a particular irony when the person who initiated gunfire is cast as the victim, and the officers who responded are cast as perpetrators. This is the inversion that has defined the "Cop City" movement from the beginning. Property destruction becomes "direct action." Criminal trespass becomes "occupation." Shooting at a trooper becomes a "dangerous and volatile situation" that the troopers somehow created.

Georgia State Patrol troopers Jonathan Lamb and Bryland Myers remain charged in connection with Paez Terán's death. The specific charges have not been publicly detailed. A federal judge has now found their use of force objectively reasonable. That finding should weigh heavily on whatever proceedings follow.

What this ruling reinforces

There is a pattern in how these stories travel through progressive media and activist networks. An encounter with the police ends in a death. The decedent is memorialized as a martyr. A legal theory is constructed to shift responsibility from the person who escalated to the officers who responded. When the legal theory fails, as it did here, the conversation pivots to "transparency" and "records," keeping the narrative of institutional guilt alive without the burden of proving it in court.

Judge Grimberg's ruling is a reminder that federal courts still evaluate use-of-force claims on the facts, not the feelings of a movement. Paez Terán fired a weapon at law enforcement officers during a lawful operation to clear trespassers. An officer was wounded. The troopers returned fire. That sequence is not a civil rights violation. It is cause and effect.

The 85-acre training facility is still being built. The movement that tried to stop it has left behind torched vehicles, a racketeering case, and a dead activist whose own lawsuit admitted to firing the first shots. The legal system looked at all of it and sided with the troopers.

Sometimes the facts are just the facts.