The Michigan Court of Appeals has upheld the state law against interfering with on-duty law enforcement and rejected a legal challenge filed by an activist who records police encounters.
In a decision released Friday, a three-judge appeals court panel agreed that Garrett Jennings Van Net got too close to Michigan State Police troopers carrying out a late-night traffic stop in November of 2022 on a stretch of highway between Gladstone and Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula. The three-judge panel held the law is not unconstitutionally vague and does not violate the First Amendment.
“The bounds of the First Amendment are not limitless. Neither are the powers of law enforcement when conducting official duties,” wrote Court of Appeals Judge Christopher Trebilcock. “This case requires that we decide when one must give way to the other.”
Trebilcock said the right to film police encounters “is of growing importance” and has been critical in exposing misconduct, such as a bystander’s videotape of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck during an arrest. In this instance, he wrote, it appeared the troopers allowed Van Net to videotape the roadside stop as long as he did not interfere with it. The incident was also taped by police body cameras.
The court said when Van Net repeatedly ignored instructions to keep a distance of about 10 feet away and not shine a light directly into a trooper’s eyes, an arrest was warranted.
The court did not draw hard lines around what is allowed and what is not allowed, but held “a police command to an individual exercising his or her right to film a police stop is lawful if it imposes a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction that is justified without regard to content, narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest.”
An attorney for Van Net reached by phone declined to comment on the decision. The Delta County Prosecutor's Office did not offer a comment in time for the deadline for this story.
The decision could be appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court.
