Key Takeaways
- Every federal court of appeals that has decided the question recognizes a First Amendment right to record police performing their duties in public, though the Supreme Court has not ruled.
- The right is subject to reasonable time, place, and manner limits, so officers may order people back who interfere with an arrest, and state laws setting distance buffers are being tested in court.
- During your own stop, officers may give safety commands such as keeping your hands on the wheel, but recording that is already running and does not interfere has strong First Amendment support.
Many accounts of police misconduct came to light because someone started recording. Do you have a constitutional right to film the police, and can an officer order you to stop?
In this TalksOnLaw Brief, Joel Cohen talks with Rachel Harmon, the Harrison Robertson Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of Virginia School of Law, about the right to record police.
A First Amendment Right, With Limits
Professor Harmon explains that almost every court to address the question has found a First Amendment right to video record police activities conducted in public, even though the Supreme Court has not heard such a case. The cases have now turned to a harder question: which time, place, and manner restrictions are reasonable? If a person with a camera walks right up to an officer making an arrest and stands within a few feet, is that protected, or may the officer order the person back and arrest them for refusing? Courts, she notes, are still working that out.
Bystanders and Hard Cases
Many videos show officers telling bystanders to put away their cameras. Professor Harmon attributes this partly to technology outpacing the law and police training, and says such resistance is becoming less common. Her harder example is a homicide scene before the victim's family has been notified: some courts might consider a rule against posting images of the body a reasonable restriction. Such cases are the exception, she stresses; overwhelmingly, people should be permitted to record police activity in public.
When You Are the One Being Stopped
Recording your own stop or arrest raises two questions, she explains: what the First Amendment protects, and what officers may lawfully prohibit you from doing physically during a stop. Courts treat an order to keep your hands on the steering wheel as a reasonable safety measure, so reaching for a phone may be treated like reaching for anything else. Whatever the empirical questions about officer risk, she says courts are unlikely to let the First Amendment override such commands. If your phone is already recording before the officer arrives, though, she sees a pure First Amendment question, and her answer is that officers should not be able to stop you from recording your own encounter if doing so does not interfere or create a risk to the officer, while noting that the case law is thin.
What to Know Now
The appellate consensus Professor Harmon describes has grown. The Tenth Circuit recognized the right in Irizarry v. Yehia (2022); the Fourth Circuit held in Sharpe v. Winterville Police Department (2023) that livestreaming a traffic stop from inside the car is protected; and in 2026 the Second Circuit joined in Massimino v. Benoit, bringing to nine the circuits that recognize a right to record police in public. The Supreme Court has not taken up the issue, and qualified immunity often shields individual officers where the right was not yet clearly established, as in both Sharpe and Massimino. The time, place, and manner question she flags is now the main battleground. Arizona's 2022 law barring recording within eight feet of police was blocked in federal court in 2023. The Seventh Circuit upheld Indiana's 25-foot buffer law in Nicodemus v. City of South Bend (2025), while a federal judge blocked Louisiana's similar law as likely too vague, and the Fifth Circuit heard the state's appeal in June 2026. Supporters say such laws protect officers and bystanders; critics say they push observers out of recording range. Recording calmly from a reasonable distance remains the most protected course.
