A Massachusetts ban on secret audio recordings of police in public areas was declared unconstitutional by a federal appeals court, reversing part of a 52-year-old state law that criminalized recordings made without officers’ permission. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said the law violated the First Amendment by undermining citizen oversight of law enforcement, the Boston Globe reports. “Massachusetts makes it as much a crime for a civic-minded observer to use a smartphone to record from a safe distance what is said during a police officer’s mistreatment of a civilian in a city park as it is for a revenge seeker to hide a tape recorder under the table at a private home to capture a conversation with an ex-spouse,” Judge David Barron wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel.
The panel, which included retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, upheld a 2018 ruling in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and news organizations, including the Globe. The decision, issued last month, did not throw out the entire statute, and it still is a crime for one member of the public to record another person’s voice without permission. The court said the public must be allowed to engage in a “species of protected newsgathering” without fear of facing criminal charges. The court cited the 1991 recording of the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King, a Black man, which triggered widespread public protests “and the many recordings of police misconduct that followed,” an indirect reference to last year’s murder of George Floyd.