Ninth Circuit keeps block on DHS use of excessive force on journalists

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Ninth Circuit panel on Thursday rejected a bid by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to stay a preliminary injunction barring federal law enforcement from using excessive and indiscriminate force against journalists covering protests in Southern California.

In an unsigned order, the three-judge panel largely denied DHS’s request to stay the injunction — issued in September by U.S. District Judge Hernán Vera in Los Angeles — while the government’s appeal is resolved. The panel has scheduled a hearing next month on the merits of the appeal.

The appellate panel, however, trimmed Vera’s injunction in so far as it applied to protesters in general who aren’t part of the lawsuit in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent reservations about such wide-ranging court orders.

The three judges — U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Gould, a Bill Clinton appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, a Barack Obama appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Mark Bennett, a Donald Trump appointee — had signaled at a hearing last week that Vera’s preliminary injunction, which pertains only to the Central District of California, was likely overbroad given the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year in Trump v CASA Inc.

“How, in light of the Supreme Court’s direction to us in CASA, would it be appropriate for us to affirm an injunction which appears to run in favor of every protester,” Bennett wondered at the hearing. “How would that type of relief survive the Supreme Court’s statement in CASA?”

Matthew Borden, an attorney for the LA Press Club, responded that in order to limit the preliminary injunction to just the two named protesters in the complaint, law enforcement would have to be provided with pictures of these two people and instructed to not use excessive force against just them.

The U.S. Justice Department, which defends DHS in the lawsuit, declined to comment on the ruling. Borden didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vera, a Joe Biden appointee, had issued an order that covered journalists — as represented by the LA Press Club, which brought the lawsuit — legal observers and protesters in general to the extent that they don’t pose a threat to law enforcement, even though the case includes only two protesters as named plaintiffs.

Protests erupted across LA County after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiated unprecedented immigration enforcement raids in June, rounding up Latino-looking workers at bus stops, Home Depot parking lots, car washes and tow yards.

The protests prompted President Donald Trump to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles, supposedly to protect federal buildings.

“With tensions escalating, officers from the Federal Protective Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection unleashed crowd control weapons indiscriminately and with surprising savagery,” Vera wrote in his decision to issue a preliminary injunction.

In downtown LA, the judge noted, journalists were repeatedly hit with pepper balls — plastic projectiles filled with a chemical irritant — while taking cover behind media trucks.

Vera also pointed to federal agents teargassing a small group of protesters, including teens, seniors and local officials in Maywood as well as shooting two reporters in the head with rubber bullets in Paramount. In Camarillo and Carpinteria, the judge added, federal agents deployed countless volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and smoke bombs on family members of detained farm workers, concerned public officials, journalists and protesters.

The LA Press Club, the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America and individual journalists, legal observers and protesters filed a trio of lawsuits against Homeland Security, the LA Police Department and the LA County Sheriff’s Department over the purported violence law enforcement directed against them during the protests.

The journalists cite the widely reported attack on Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi, who was shot in the back with a rubber bullet. Video footage shows an LAPD officer in riot gear turning and aiming a large gun at Tomasi, making the incident appear deliberate. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it “horrific.”

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