Louisiana made it a crime to be within 25 feet of an on-duty police officer once asked to leave, a law crafted to make it difficult to record evidence of police misconduct—as happened in the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin. Six news organizations have sued to overturn the law, reports nola.com.
The federal lawsuit, which asks the court to block enforcement of the act and to declare it unconstitutional, was filed July 31 in the U.S. Middle District Court of Louisiana. Verite News, Gannett, Gray, Nexstar, Scripps and Tegna are listed as plaintiffs.
"People need to feel like they can observe and record the state exercising its police power, whether that's on Bourbon street or the side of the road," said Scott Sternberg, a First Amendment lawyer representing the plaintiffs. "There is so much subjectivity in this law, and it is so unbelievably vague."
It criminalizes anything short of immediate compliance with unreasonable demands. And if 25ft isn't enough to get rid of you, they can just walk toward you. There are already many examples of police ordering people to stop filming in their own homes and vehicles, or forcing bystanders away from incidents under threat of arrest. This law facilitates escalation by public officials who don't want their activities recorded; whetever exemptions there are, cops rarely know the details of laws in practice.
the buffer law "grants law enforcement officers limitless, standardless discretion to prevent journalists from approaching near enough to document the way officers perform their duties in public places."It also points out that journalists regularly find themselves within 25 feet of active-duty law enforcement in a variety of newsworthy public places and circumstances, such as Mardi Gras parades, LSU football games, rallies and press conferences.
Here's the lawsuit [pdf].
The Act would, in all of those scenarios and more, empower officers to force journalists and members of the public out of sight and earshot—and "[i]f police could stop criticism or filming by asking onlookers to leave," officers would be able to "effectively silence them" and "bypass the Constitution."
