Tennessee Highway Patrol officers subdue a high school student during April 2023 protests over gun laws at the Tennessee Capitol. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
A coalition of media groups, including the Tennessee Lookout, is challenging a new state law making it a crime to come within 25 feet of a law enforcement officer after being told to stay back.
Tennessee’s so-called “buffer” law lays out scenarios in which reporters or others approaching police may be arrested and charged with a misdemeanor.
They include situations in which an officer is conducting a traffic stop, working the scene of an alleged crime or handling “an ongoing and immediate threat to public safety.” The law does not require an intent by journalists to disrupt police activity and gives officers discretion to decide when to order reporters and photographers to stay away.
The law has “grave implications” for the ability of journalists and news organizations to exercise their First Amendment rights, the lawsuit said.
“The Act authorizes law enforcement officers to bar journalists (and the public) from reporting — for any reason and no reason — on a wide range of events of public interest, including a parade, a rally, and arrest or an accident scene,” the complaint said.
“The Act applies with equal force to a reporter gathering the news in a park, standing on a sidewalk or lawfully present in other spaces open to the public,” it said.
The lawsuit is seeking a judgment that the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments and an injunction blocking the law, which took effect July 1, from being enforced against the media organizations filing suit.
In addition to the Lookout, the Nashville Banner, Gannett, Scripps Media and TEGNA are plaintiffs in the suit, represented by Paul McAdoo and Grayson Clary of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The organization has successfully obtained preliminary injuctions against similar laws in Louisiana and Indiana.
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