LAPD wants judge to lift an order restricting use of force against the press

Ahead of this Saturday’s No Kings protests, the Los Angeles Police Department has filed an emergency motion asking a judge to lift an injunction that restricts the use of force against the press.

The injunction creates “undefined and operationally impracticable standards that expose the city and its officers to contempt for good-faith actions taken to protect the public,” according to lawyers for the city, including City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, and the police department.

Adam Rose, press rights chair at the Los Angeles Press Club, told LAist in a written statement, “Karen Bass is quick to run to the media for attention to criticize Trump for violating court orders (rightfully so!), but when the media is assaulted by her own LAPD, she never says a word.”

Rose continued: “Instead of holding the department accountable, the city is spending even more money to hire an outside law firm so they can effectively beg a judge for permission to keep assaulting journalists for just doing their job. The mayor of Los Angeles needs to take charge here, and Bass has been completely absent.”

LAist has reached out to Mayor Bass and the Los Angeles Police Department for comment. We will update this story when and if we hear back.

Attorneys for the press groups are expected to oppose the motion.

The emergency request comes ahead of around 80 different No Kings protests planned across the greater Los Angeles area to demonstrate against what they call “authoritarian power grabs” by the Trump administration.

How we got here

Judge Hernán Vera of the Central District Court of California issued the injunction in September after the Los Angeles Press Club and investigative reporting outlet Status Coup sued the police department for its treatment of journalists during anti-ICE protests in June.

Vera wrote, “It is déjà vu all over again,” adding that the latest protests presented “the latest chapter in a long and unfortunate saga of the LAPD’s use of unlawful force against members of the media.”

The police response

In their emergency motion filed Wednesday, lawyers for the police department argued that instead of restricting the use of force for journalists affiliated with the LA Press Club and Status Coup, the language in the injunction “gives every journalist, regardless of affiliation, the same enforceable protections.”

And that hamstrings officers, they argue. Instead, the injunction should only be applied to journalists affiliated with the Los Angeles Press Club and the investigative reporting group Status Coup.

Go deeper into the legal debate

In the emergency motion, the lawyers wrote, if police officers are expected to read and apply the judge’s injunction restricting their use of force against members of the press, journalists should be expected to carry credentials.

“The 'exigencies' the court cited, therefore, do not justify extending the injunction to every 'journalist' in the city,” they wrote.

But Vera wrote in the injunction that the LAPD appeared to use projectiles to target journalists wearing visible gear that identified them as press.

In the emergency motion, lawyers also wrote that plaintiffs with the LA Press Club or Status Coup failed to show that there is a likelihood of the LAPD restricting press access or using unlawful force in the future.

Yet, in his injunction ruling, Vera identified the LAPD’s unlawful use of force against journalists at several instances including at the 2020 George Floyd protests, a 2007 May Day rally and in 2000 as journalists documented police use of force during the Democratic National Convention.