A federal judge on Friday ordered the Los Angeles Police Department to stop using foam projectiles, tear gas and flash-bang devices against journalists covering protests after reporters and photographers were struck during demonstrations last month.
The temporary restraining order by Judge Hernán D. Vera of U.S. District Court also prohibits police officers from blocking journalists from closed areas, obstructing them from gathering information and detaining them for violating curfews or failing to disperse.
The case stems from injuries that journalists experienced while covering street demonstrations against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement. A lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles Press Club and Status Coup, an investigative reporting site, documented 35 instances in which Los Angeles police officers had used projectiles, tear gas or other forms of force against journalists or blocked them from public areas.
The press organizations are likely to succeed in arguing that the journalists’ First Amendment rights were violated and that they would suffer harm in covering future protests in Los Angeles, the judge wrote in granting the temporary order, which lasts 14 days.
“Indeed, given the fundamental nature of the speech interests involved and the almost daily protests throughout Southern California drawing media coverage, the identified harm is undoubtedly imminent and concrete,” Judge Vera wrote.
He set a hearing for later this month to consider whether to issue a preliminary injunction and ordered the Los Angeles Police Department to disseminate the restrictions in his order to its officers within 72 hours.
Adam Rose, the press rights chair for the Los Angeles Press Club, said the ruling was important because it showed the critical role journalists play in informing the public. It also shows that the Los Angeles police have not been following state laws that are meant to protect reporters covering protests, he said.
“The press should be able to do their job without fear of being injured by police, without fear of their rights being chilled in other ways,” Mr. Rose said.
The Los Angeles Police Department declined to comment, and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit describes a widely covered incident in which a police officer shot Lauren Tomasi, an Australian journalist, in the leg with a projectile while she was holding a microphone and facing a camera for a live television report. Other journalists clearly identified as members of the media were shoved by police officers, pushed by police horses or shot with projectiles in the knee, head, abdomen and chest, the suit said.
A reporter for The New York Times was shot in the torso with a foam projectile while she covered a large demonstration in downtown Los Angeles on June 8. Her incident is one of many mentioned in the lawsuit, but The Times is not a party in the case.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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