- U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera issued preliminary injunctions in lawsuits against the Los Angeles Police Department and the Department of Homeland Security over officers’ treatment of journalists.
- Vera wrote that federal officers “indiscriminate use of force … will undoubtedly chill the media’s efforts” to cover protests and that the police department violated both state and federal law.
- Press groups filed lawsuits against both agencies in June following protests over President Donald Trump’s immigration raids in Los Angeles.
A federal judge handed press and civil liberties groups wins in two separate cases against the Los Angeles Police Department and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the treatment of journalists covering immigration raid protests.
U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera’s preliminary injunctions bar, among other actions, the police department from arresting journalists for failing to disperse or otherwise interfering with journalists’ ability to cover Los Angeles protests. The DHS officers are also barred from “dispersing, threatening, or assaulting” journalists who haven’t “committed a crime unrelated to failing to obey a dispersal order.”
In his Sept. 10 order in the LAPD case, Vera wrote that the department’s “heavy-handed efforts to police this summer’s protests” violated both state and federal law.
In granting the motion in the DHS case, Vera said federal officers “unleashed crowd control weapons indiscriminately and with surprising savagery” during the protests.
“Specifically, the Court concludes that federal agents’ indiscriminate use of force … will undoubtedly chill the media’s efforts to cover these public events and protestors seeking to express peacefully their views on national policies,” Vera wrote.
He went on to condemn individuals who engaged in violent action during such protests, but said “the actions of a relative few does not give DHS carte blanche to unleash near-lethal force on crowds of third parties in the vicinity.”
In taking such actions, Vera wrote, federal officers have “endangered” peaceful protesters, journalists and the broader public.
“The First Amendment demands better,” he wrote.
USA TODAY reached out to the police department and the DHS for comment.
“There’s an old line in policing: We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” Adam Rose, press rights chair of the Los Angeles Press Club, said in a news release following the rulings. “Press organizations have been trying to help LAPD for years take the easy way, just asking them to train officers and discipline offenders. They wouldn’t stop resisting. LAPD failed to police themselves. Now a judge is doing it for them.”
The First Amendment Coalition filed the federal lawsuit against the police department in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of the press club and the independent media outlet Status Coup in mid-June.
Days later, a similar lawsuit was filed against Noem over what the plaintiffs, which include the Los Angeles Press Club and the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, described as federal officers’ unconstitutional actions against journalists.
Vera issued a temporary restraining order in the LAPD case on July 10 that barred officers from using less-lethal munitions against journalists not posing a threat to law enforcement. The plaintiffs later accused the department of violating the order by hitting journalists with batons and arresting them during an August protest.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/09/15/lapd-dhs-la-press-club-court-wins/86112156007
