Seventh Circuit: Ban on Audio Recording of Police Officers Likely Unconstitutional

(Eugene Volokh)

From ACLU v. Alvarez (7th Cir. May 8, 2012) (Judge Sykes joined by Judge Hamilton, with Judge Posner dissenting):

We reverse and remand with instructions to allow the amended complaint and enter a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the eavesdropping statute as applied to audio recording of the kind alleged here.

The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts a medium of expression commonly used for the preservation and communication of information and ideas, thus triggering First Amendment scrutiny. Illinois has criminalized the nonconsensual recording of most any oral communication, including recordings of public officials doing the public’s business in public and regardless of whether the re cording is open or surreptitious.

Defending the broad sweep of this statute, the State’s Attorney relies on the government’s interest in protecting conversational privacy, but that interest is not implicated when police officers are performing their duties in public places and engaging in public communications audible to persons who witness the events. Even under the more lenient intermediate standard of scrutiny applicable to content-neutral burdens on speech, this application of the statute very likely flunks. The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests; as applied to the facts alleged here, it likely violates the First Amendment’s free-speech and free-press guarantees.

I’m just beginning to read the opinions, but I wanted to flag the key holding. [UPDATE: Sorry, meant to also say that this decision reaches pretty much the same result as Glik v. Cunliffe (1st Cir. 2011), which I blogged about last year.]

UPDATE: A few follow-up thoughts:

1. The opinion specifically sets aside the question whether state law could (1) ban surreptitious interception even of public communications, and (2) ban surreptitious interception of communications that the parties would reasonably expect to remain private. (“[T]his case has nothing to do with private conversations or surreptitious interceptions.” “We are not suggesting that the First Amendment protects only open recording. The distinction between open and concealed recording, however, may make a difference in the intermediate-scrutiny calculus because surreptitious recording brings stronger privacy interests into play.”). For an example of a state high court decision that affirmed a citizen’s conviction for surreptitiously recording his encounter with the police, see Commonwealth v. Hyde (Mass. 2001), though the court did not discuss the First Amendment.

But I think the Seventh Circuit’s reasoning should apply to a person’s surreptitious recording of his interactions with the police in the course of their jobs, and not just to open recordings. Among other things, even content-neutral restrictions are immune from strict scrutiny only if they are narrowly tailored to an important government interest and leave open adequate alternative channels for speech (or, here, for gathering the information needed to speak). The Seventh Circuit didn’t decide whether this adequate alternative channels requirement was satisfied here (because it found the law to be overinclusive with respect to any privacy interests that might justify a narrower law), and wasn’t certain that the factor applies to information gathering restrictions, though I think it should so apply given that information gathering restrictions may burden the ability to speak much like direct speech restrictions would. Yet it did suggest that bans on recording information don’t leave open adequate alternative channels:

We note, however, that audio and audiovisual recording are uniquely reliable and powerful methods of preserving and disseminating news and information about events that occur in public. Their self-authenticating character makes it highly unlikely that other methods could be considered reasonably adequate substitutes.

And this is also true of surreptitious recording, since often surreptitious recording will yield more accurate information about how police officers actually behave in ordinary interactions with citizens (as opposed to how they behave when they know that their statements could be heard that day on the evening news).