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The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit covers the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, the second most populous state. The court has issued a decision that clearly establishes the right to record police, which did not previously exist in the Fifth Circuit.
The plaintiff, Phillip Turner, was recording a Fort Worth police station (6:35 YouTube) from a public sidewalk (known as a "First Amendment audit") when officers approached him and asked for identification. Turner refused to ID himself and was eventually handcuffed and placed in the back of a patrol car. Turner was released at the scene and later filed charges against three officers (amended to include the City of Fort Worth) under 42 U.S.C. ยง 1983, alleging violations of his First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The officers moved to dismiss the case, claiming qualified immunity, which was granted by the district court. The Fifth Circuit has affirmed, reversed, and remanded portions of the district court's decision in what can be considered an overall win for Mr. Turner (10:59 YouTube).
From Cornell's Legal Information Institute, "the Supreme Court [has] held that courts considering officials' qualified immunity claims do not need to consider whether or not the officials actually violated a plaintiff's right if it is clear that the right was not clearly established". In Turner v. Driver, the appeals court has upheld the qualified immunity claims related to the First Amendment because the right to record police was not clearly established in the Fifth Circuit. Although the right to record police was not clearly established at the time of the challenged conduct in September 2015, the decision also clearly establishes that right from now on:
[Continues...]
Although the right was not clearly established at the time of Turner's activities, whether such a right exists and is protected by the First Amendment presents a separate and distinct question. Because the issue continues to arise in the qualified immunity context, we now proceed to determine it for the future. We conclude that First Amendment principles, controlling authority, and persuasive precedent demonstrate that a First Amendment right to record the police does exist, subject only to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.
[...] We agree with every circuit that has ruled on this question: Each has concluded that the First Amendment protects the right to record the police. As the First Circuit explained, "[t]he filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within [basic First Amendment] principles." This right, however, "is not without limitations." Like all speech, filming the police "may be subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions." In this case, however, we need not decide which specific time, place, and manner restrictions would be reasonable. Nonetheless, we note that when police departments or officers adopt time, place, and manner restrictions, those restrictions must be "narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest." That said, to be constitutionally permissible, a time, place, and manner restriction "need not be the least restrictive or least intrusive means of serving the government's interests."
The court also found that the officers' restraint of Phillip Turner's movement in the back of the patrol car constituted an arrest, and that there was no probable cause for his arrest because "police cannot arrest an individual solely for refusing to provide identification." Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement dissented on both the establishment of a First Amendment right to record police and the reversal of the qualified immunity granted to the officers related to the unlawful arrest of Phillip Turner.
According to Turner, the Texas Civil Rights Project refused to assist with his case and the ACLU simply did not respond. Eventually, Dallas-based attorney Kervyn Altaffer took his case.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Saturday February 18 2017, @08:57PM
To be fair, I severely doubt said framers could have even conceived of a world where something the size of a small book could record high quality video and near instantly communicate it to the rest of the world, and that it would be ubiquitous enough technology that everyone in the country would have access to one if they wished.
I agree with your sentiment, but I'm going to say that I think this is something that would be pretty impossible to assume their intent upon.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday February 19 2017, @03:08AM
I agree with your sentiment, but I'm going to say that I think this is something that would be pretty impossible to assume their intent upon.
I don't know precisely what AC intended here, but one thing we KNOW about the "intent" of the Founders is that they pretty much meant for the federal government to have no powers other than what was enumerated in the Constitution, and EVERYTHING else was pretty much a power (or "right") either delegated to the states (to regulate as they wish) OR to the people. The Founders were so concerned about this idea that when they passed the Bill of Rights, they were concerned that some people might think these were the ONLY rights -- hence, they included the Ninth Amendment [wikipedia.org], which states:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Followed by the Tenth Amendment [wikipedia.org]:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Now, everything got a bit confused since then. Originally, the Bill of Rights and these amendments were considered restrictions on the federal government alone. Hence, for the first few decades of the U.S., there were some states that maintained official established religions. Etc. States used to get away with violating a bunch of the stuff in the Bill of Rights, including various protections at trials, etc. But mostly in the 20th century, SCOTUS has incorporated [wikipedia.org] most of the clauses of the Bill of Rights to apply to state governments as well as federal governments.
Anyhow, this is a long-winded way of getting around to the fact that it's pretty obvious the Founders would have asserted a "right" for citizens to record FEDERAL police, by implication through the 9th and 10th amendments. Of course, that last phrase ("federal police") is a Constitutional oxymoron, since there is no police power granted to the federal government, a fact that led to a number of federal laws being overturned by SCOTUS up through the 1930s... even ones that had nothing to do with police per se, but anything encroaching on the "police power" of the states.
But now everything is a muddle, because (1) federal power since the late 1930s has basically been unlimited and no longer subject to the "enumerated powers" of the Constitution in any meaningful way, and (2) many "rights" aren't clearly assigned to federal vs. state realms of power anymore. The Founders would have been completely agnostic on a question of dealing with state or local police, since the original Constitution (except in a few places) has almost no guidance or restrictions on how state law can function in this regard. But they also really valued the idea of the 9th Amendment as asserting that rights for the people existed by default.
However, one notable omission for incorporation is the 9th amendment -- that is, the implication that rights exist for the people by default (even if not listed elsewhere) which STATES cannot infringe on. There have been some notable attempts by SCOTUS justices to shoehorn a 9th Amendment argument in, especially in Griswold v. Connecticut (which established the federal "right to privacy," initially to force states to allow birth control) and later in Roe v. Wade (which depended on the reasoning of the previous ruling in Griswold).
Bottom line is that we live with a vastly different Constitution than the Founders originally implemented, with vastly different assumptions about "default" power granted to state or federal government, and vastly different assumptions about what "rights" may exist at various levels. But AC certainly has an implicit point about the fact that the Founders did have a notion that plenty of unenumerated rights exist, and they put in a Constitutional amendment to make that explicitly clear.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 19 2017, @03:36AM
I'd like to add that local police often take an oath that mentions supporting, upholding, or defending the Constitution. Whatever that means anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office#State_and_Local_Oaths [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Sunday February 19 2017, @03:51AM
That is a very reasonable response. Thank you for that.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:17PM
The application of the federal Bill of Rights protections onto state governments is a direct result of the 14th Amendment, which states in part: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
There are lots of people who would like to pretend that's not part of the law of the United States, or believe it's an illegitimate amendment because it was imposed on the South by force in 1865, but that's one reason the issue gets muddled a bit.
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