06-08-2025
- Politics
- Indianapolis Star
Indiana law creating 25-foot 'buffer zone' around police unconstitutional by federal court
A law requiring a 25-foot buffer zone between on-duty police officers and bystanders is "unconstitutionally vague," the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled on Aug. 5.
"The decision should throw cold water on enthusiasm for these new police bubble laws across the country," said Grayson Clary, a staff attorney at the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The 2023 buffer zone law has been challenged for potential violations of the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and the press, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires due process and equal protection under the law. The Aug. 5 ruling was based solely on the latter.
The court stated that the law is susceptible to discriminatory or arbitrary enforcement and would grant police discretion to make arbitrary arrests.
Police could "subject any pedestrian to potential criminal liability by simply ordering them not to approach, even if the pedestrian is doing nothing more than taking a morning stroll or merely walking up to an officer to ask for directions," wrote Judge Doris Pryor, who was appointed to the Seventh Circuit court by then-President Joe Biden in 2022.
Lawyers representing the state's case in favor of the statute conceded that officers could tell people to stop approaching for no reason, including a made-up reason or a "bad breakfast."
That reasoning will not stand "no matter how bitter the coffee or soggy the scrambled eggs," Pryor wrote.
The buffer zone law's enforcement had been on hold since September 2024 when a federal judge presiding over a lawsuit filed by a coalition of Indiana media organizations, including IndyStar, ruled that the law was too vague to be enforced fairly.
Additional proceedings will take place to determine whether the law is permanently blocked for all Indiana residents or only the parties named in the lawsuit. A June 2025 U.S. Supreme Court ruling sharply limited federal courts' ability to issue injunctions that affect people other than the parties in a particular lawsuit.
In practice, because the Seventh Circuit has already made clear that the law is unconstitutional on its face, it would be deeply challenging for the state to enforce it, Clary said.
The law was established in April 2023 by House Bill 1186, which made it a Class C misdemeanor offense for anyone who comes within 25 feet of an on-duty officer after being asked to stop.
In a separate ruling in May, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law, as written, does not violate the First Amendment. No decision was made as to whether the law would violate freedom of the press in practice.
Media coalitions' cases challenging similar police buffer laws in Louisiana and Tennessee remain pending.
