Lawyers urge appeals court overseeing 6 states to recognize a constitutional right to film police

U.S. government lawyers on Wednesday asked the appeals court overseeing four western and two midwestern states to recognize that the First Amendment guarantee of free speech gives people the right to film police as they do their work in public — a decision that would allow officers to be sued if they interfere with bystanders trying to record them.

Six of the nation's 12 appeals courts have recognized that right, but the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has not — and justices heard arguments in the case of a YouTube journalist and blogger who claimed that a suburban Denver officer blocked him from recording a 2019 traffic stop.

Natasha Babazadeh, an attorney for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, urged a three-judge panel from the court to rule that filming police is a constitutional right and said there has been an increase in the number of lawsuits filed against police by people saying they could not record them in public. The appeals court has jurisdiction over Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah, and the parts of Yellowstone National Park that lie in Idaho and Montana.