Friday, December 25, 2020

Breanna Lungo-Koehn RESTRICTING INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES


what is a 'state actor' and do you want your teenager to be CORI checked by Breanna Lungo Koehn and Patrick Gordon?  It is so wrong!

Demarest v. Athol/Orange Cmty. TV, Inc., 188 F. Supp. 2d 82 (D. Mass. 2002) .................. 9, 11, 14

 

UPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY APPELLATE DIVISION ...

THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION. PROTECTS ... The right to videotape in public places is subject only to ... Demarest vAthol/Orange Cmty. TV, Inc., ... the grant of access for plaintiffs to sue state actors in.

FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO TAPE THE POLICE

 Nor do the police have the general power to stop individuals from filming them in the course of their public 7 There may be circumstances in which the First Amendment right to videotape in public yields to the privacy interests of private citizens being videotaped. To be sure, most activities in public cannot be regarded as private. And any restrictions on videotaping would have to be narrowly tailored to serve any significant privacy interests that remain. See Demarest v. Athol/Orange Cmty. TV, Inc., 188 F. Supp. 2d at 94 (finding that a policy requiring that broadcaster obtain a release form from every person captured on tape was not sufficiently tailored and remarking that “[i]t is doubtful whether, consistent with the First Amendment [defendant] may so entirely subordinate the plaintiffs’ right of expression to citizens’ privacy rights.”). But the First Amendment might yield to narrowly-tailored laws prohibiting stalking, for example, or protecting individuals against pervasive, surreptitious surveillance. See United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544 (D.C. Cir. 2010), cert. granted sub nom. United States v. Jones, 131 S. Ct. 3064 (2011) (finding, for Fourth Amendment purposes, that an individual retains a reasonable expectation of privacy in the “totality and pattern of his movements from place to place to place.”). But see Pomykacz, 438 F. Supp. 2d at 513 n.14 (plaintiff, who was charged with “stalking” because she often photographed mayor and police officer, could proceed on her First Amendment retaliation claim because the First Amendment protected her right to photograph public officials in the performance of their duties). 15 duties. For instance, in Glik v. Cunniffe, the First Circuit held that the plaintiff had a constitutional right to film police officers executing an arrest on the Boston Common, holding that “peaceful recording of an arrest in a public space that does not interfere with the police officers’ performance of their duties is not reasonably subject to limitation.” 655 F.3d at 84. Similarly, in Robinson v. Fetterman, 378 F. Supp. 2d at 542, the court held that the defendant officers violated the First Amendment when they arrested an individual for filming them as they conducted highway truck inspections from a distance of approximately 30 feet. See also Pomykacz, 438 F. Supp. 2d at 513 (holding that photographing police officer and mayor in connection with political activism protected by the First Amendment).

https://www.aclu-nj.org/download_file/view_inline/936/689

III. THE LAW DIVISION ERRED BY DISMISSING PLAINTIFF’S CLAIMS ON THE BASIS OF QUALIFIED IMMUNITY Qualified immunity is a doctrine created by the federal courts as a defense available to state officials who have been sued for damages under the federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The doctrine was intended as a balance against the grant of access for plaintiffs to sue state actors in federal courts. See Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U.S. 622, 650-54 (1980) (describing history of immunities, including qualified immunity, under § 1983). The doctrine provides that defendant officials are immune from suit — not merely limited in their liability — so long as “their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). Accordingly, when an official invokes qualified immunity, a court must determine whether the rights at stake were “clearly established” at the time of the alleged violation. If the court finds that the law was not sufficiently 

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