Federal district court blocks enforcement of Louisiana police ‘buffer zone’ law

A federal district court in Louisiana has blocked the state from enforcing a law that makes it a crime to approach within 25 feet of a law enforcement officer after being told to stay back, concluding that the statute is unconstitutionally vague and “allows for arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”

In a ruling issued on Friday, Judge John W. deGravelles of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana largely agreed with arguments made by attorneys from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Sternberg Naccari & White LLC in a lawsuit filed last year on behalf of a coalition of news organizations. The judge held that the police “buffer zone” law violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it fails to specify what kinds of behavior by a journalist or other member of the public might prompt an officer to issue an order to stay back.

“It is not a crime to stand within 25 feet of a police officer,” Judge deGravelles wrote in his opinion, “and yet the Act gives an officer unfettered and standardless discretion to make it a crime merely by ordering retreat even when there is no conduct that justifies such an order.”

The decision echoes a ruling issued just a few months ago by a district court in Indiana, which blocked the state from enforcing a nearly identical police buffer zone law signed by the governor in 2023, finding it unconstitutionally vague. That ruling also came in response to a lawsuit Reporters Committee attorneys filed on behalf of a coalition of journalism and news organizations.

“Laws like this, which bar reporters and the public from getting close enough to document police officers’ public duties, are clearly unconstitutional, and we’re glad the court blocked this statute’s enforcement,” said Reporters Committee Staff Attorney Grayson Clary. “This ruling will help ensure that journalists can continue to inform communities across the state about their public servants.”

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed the police buffer zone law last May. The law is broad, authorizing officers to issue a dispersal order even if an individual doesn’t pose a safety risk and is not obstructing law enforcement. It also does not require officers to accommodate the First Amendment right to report on government activity.

In late July, one day before the law went into effect, attorneys from the Reporters Committee and Sternberg Naccari & White LLC sued state officials on behalf of six news organizations — Deep South Today, d/b/a Verite News, TEGNA Inc., Scripps Media Inc., Nexstar Media Inc., Gray Local Media, Inc., and Gannett Co., Inc. — arguing that that law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments and asking the district court to block its enforcement. 

In a motion for a preliminary injunction filed last September, the media coalition offered specific examples showing how the state’s police buffer zone law has restricted journalists’ ability to report the news. Journalists also expressed concerns about complying with orders to retreat 25 feet when reporting in large crowds.

In his opinion, Judge deGravelles addressed the news organizations’ First Amendment arguments, noting that the police buffer zone law threatened to chill journalists’ newsgathering rights. However, his decision to block the enforcement of the law centered on the media coalition’s arguments that the law is unconstitutionally vague. 

“[W]hile the Act clearly states that an officer can enforce a 25-foot buffer zone, it lacks any standard by which an officer may issue an order to stand back or retreat,” the judge wrote. “An officer may give an order for a legitimate reason, i.e. to protect bystanders from hazards, but the officer may just as easily give an order for no reason at all.”

As a result, Judge deGravelles added, “The public is not put on notice or given any warning about what activity, if any, they must be engaged in when they may be subject to such an order.”