BREAKING NEWS:
PORTLAND, Ore. (OMG) the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has OVERTURNED the law that prohibits recording in the state of Oregon on the grounds it violates the 1st amendment. I filed the lawsuit (PVA v Schmidt) with attorney Benjamin Barr and Steve Klein at the Marc O. Hatfield courthouse in Chapman square in downtown Portland with heavy security three years ago.

Oregon Revised Statute 165.540(1)(c). This law prohibited anyone from making an audio recording unless that person “specifically informed” others they were recording. But the law also included special permissions from government to allow for non-notified recording of the police, but not any other government employee.

OREGON RECORDING LAW STRUCK DOWN: Circuit Judge Sandra S. Ikuta out of the 9th circuit in Pasadena, California authored the opinion overturning Mosman’s order. Ikuta wrote, “Oregon does not have a compelling interest in protecting individuals’ conversational privacy from other individuals’ protected speech in places open to the public, even if that protected speech consists of creating audio or visual recordings of other people.”

Oregon has no power to protect the conversational privacy of some people in a public place from the First Amendment protected newsgathering of other individuals. Because the law lets government distort the newsgaterhing process and bans entirely too much effective journalism, it violated the First Amendment on its face.