A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the dismissal of a class-action lawsuit filed by 32 people arrested or detained during the raucous first day of the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

The 32 people claimed that their rights to free speech and to be free from arrest without cause had been violated when they were part of a group rounded up along Shepard Road south of downtown.

Police and the city argued that some of the people within the group of about 400 protesters had been among those who had defied orders to "back up" when they approached officers earlier at the intersection of Shepard Road and Jackson Street.

That confrontation occurred after police ordered downtown closed to protesters.

"The circumstances led officers reasonably to believe that a growing crowd intended to penetrate a police line and access downtown St. Paul," the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a ruling Friday that affirmed U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson's dismissal of the lawsuit in 2010.

Twenty-five of the 32 people who filed suit were booked and taken into custody on Sept. 1, 2008, while the other seven people were briefly detained and released. Eventually, all charges against the 25 people arrested were dismissed.

ANTHONY LONETREE