The American Civil Liberties Union is petitioning a judge to prevent the Memphis Safe Task Force from punishing people who exercise their First Amendment right to record police activity.
In a brief four-second clip from last December, an unmarked law enforcement vehicle with darkened windows rolls along a residential street in Memphis, Tennessee, while a wry voice over the loudspeaker says, “Good job, Hunter.”
“Hunter” was Hunter Demster, the man filming, and the fact that federal agents inside the truck knew his name filled him with unease. Demster had spent months tracking and recording the Memphis Safe Task Force, a cross-agency body comprising federal and state officers, and he had faced growing hostility and intimidation from those on duty. In a court declaration, Demster would later write that the taunting remark and the implicit message—“we know your name”—made him question whether continuing was worthwhile.
Demster is now the lead plaintiff in a First Amendment suit, and the video is among a collection of exhibits supporting claims that Task Force personnel illegally retaliate against bystanders who document their actions. Demster and eight other Memphis residents filed court declarations last week recounting violent arrests, home surveillance, stops made under dubious pretenses, police cars boxing them in, and jail time for attempting to film the Task Force.
The lawsuit, filed in mid-May by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU Foundation of Tennessee, Selendy Gay PLLC, and BraunHagey & Borden LLP, seeks a preliminary injunction to bar Task Force officers from intimidating, assaulting, or detaining people for recording. The proposed order would also forbid Task Force personnel from invoking a new state law that penalizes bystanders who get too close to police, setting a 25-foot buffer.
The action represents a significant challenge to what the ACLU and groups such as the libertarian Cato Institute describe as an informal, unconstitutional DHS policy that treats filming law enforcement as a criminal activity. (In support of this framing, the ACLU lawsuit cites a prior DHS statement to Reason suggesting that following or recording federal officers “sure sounds like obstruction of justice.”)
While the Supreme Court has not directly ruled on the issue, seven federal circuit courts have consistently affirmed the right to observe and record police activity so long as one does not physically interfere with officers. Yet in the past two years, videos from across the country—ranging from Oregon to Maine to the Florida Keys—have shown federal immigration agents arresting or threatening to arrest people for filming them.
Scarlet Kim, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU, stated in a press release that this pattern is especially evident in Memphis, where the Task Force has launched a “campaign of harassment and intimidation” against observers.
“What we’re seeing in Memphis is the systematic repression of the First Amendment right to peacefully observe, gather information about, and film government officials operating in public,” Kim said. “No one should have their personal safety or privacy compromised simply for bringing to light what Task Force agents are doing on the streets of Memphis.”
According to Demster’s declaration, he had spent roughly a decade documenting immigration enforcement in Memphis and sharing Know Your Rights information in his neighborhood when the Task Force was formed by the Trump administration and the State of Tennessee last September. Demster wrote that his objective is “to bear witness to Task Force activity and hold Task Force agents accountable to the public, including by identifying Task Force agents and agencies operating in my community.”
However, Demster said he repeatedly encountered obstruction and intimidation from Task Force officers. He wrote that officers crowded him, shone flashlights at him to spoil his footage, swerved their vehicles toward his location, and ordered him to retreat so far that he could not see what was happening. He also noted that on several occasions an unmarked police car sat idling outside his home when he returned from reporting.
On December 12, 2025, Demster was stopped by a Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officer and several unmarked vehicles. Demster wrote that at least six Task Force agents surrounded his car while the THP officer issued a questionable ticket for a broken taillight. According to his declaration, when he appeared in traffic court, he was told the ticket had never been filed in the system.
Jessica Chodor, one of the other plaintiffs, was forcibly arrested on October 28 of the previous year while attempting to document a Task Force traffic stop.
A THP officer on the scene ordered Chodor to return to her vehicle, but she replied that she was moving to a public sidewalk across the street.
“You’re going back there to your car or you’re going to jail,” the THP officer warned her.
When Chodor insisted she had no legal obligation to return, the officer seized her.
“[The Task Force agent] tackled me to the ground with immense force,” Chodor wrote in her declaration. “Once I was on the ground, he and another person pinned me to the ground facedown. I was shocked and scared. I did not know what was happening or understand that they were arresting me, because I hadn’t broken any laws and they did not tell me I was under arrest.”
Chodor spent 27 hours in the Shelby County Jail before being released. The suit indicates she was charged with resisting official detention, but those charges were dismissed.
Additionally, the lawsuit challenges the Task Force’s application of Tennessee’s “Halo law,” which makes it a crime to approach within 25 feet of an officer when directed to back away. Demster’s declaration suggests the Task Force invoked the Halo law roughly 40 to 50 times to threaten arrest and push him more than 100 feet away from scenes he was trying to document, well beyond the distance where he could capture footage.
Several states, including Florida, Louisiana, Indiana, and Arizona, have enacted similar “buffer zone” statutes in recent years. Proponents argue that first responders should not be harassed while performing their duties. Civil liberties groups counter that such laws chill the public’s ability to document police activity. Arizona’s version, for example, was struck down by a federal judge in 2023 for being unconstitutionally overbroad.
“Despite the intimidation I have faced from the Task Force, I know that it’s important to stand up for my rights,” Demster said in an ACLU press release. “I have a constitutional right to observe Task Force agents without worrying that they might be surveilling my home or tailing my car. Documenting their activity and showing the world what is happening in Memphis is essential to holding them accountable, and I will use my voice and my platform to defend the First Amendment and for my neighbors.”
