For better or worse, when I notice an HN item that looks interesting, I find myself reading the HN comments first, and skipping the article half the time because of exactly this kind of thing.

This is why I use hacker news. What other communities are still like this? Reddit comments are a joke now (in popular subreddits).

Yeah, the ruling wasn't at all about his filming of police officers, it was about whether or not the judge should have recused themself..(?) I'm very confused as to how you could say "Eighth Circuit: Citizens do not have a right to film public officials in public" after the only sentence having to do with filming public officials in public was "Akins also alleged that the defendants violated his rights by removing videos he had posted on the CPD Facebook page, by ordering him to stop filming the filing of acitizen complaint in the CPD lobby, and by posting in the police department a flyer with information about him"

But again, the judgement wasn't at all about him filming public officials, only about whether or not the judge should've presided over the case.

Yes, after reading the article I immediately searched the 8th circuits opinions, and the only case regarding Akins is on if the district judge should have recused themselves (which they said no). And the reason I immediately searched was the 8th district is very conservative and much more likely to agree with what is obviously Constitutional and in line with over 100 years of commonly understood law, than to cowboy up and say public photography is illegal.

But fake news sadly FTW.

This is often the case, especially with a hot-button topic. I suspect this might be the case here as well -- I have not read the judgement yet. However, to have an informative discussion, can you provide a TL; DR summary.

The main question I personally have is if can I still film anything and everyone on public property or has this been curtailed in some way shape or form.

I scanned through the dockets a bit; scroll down to see my post.

As far as I see it, the author of the article leads you to believe that 'public' means 'any public space' when in fact the court was ruling about filming in 'public proceedings', which is completely different.

IANAL, so if someone decides to hold public proceedings in a public place, can I still film this (because it is a public place) or not (because terrorism/policy/precedent/whatever)?

Take a look at one of the older dockets on the case and decide for yourself what they're saying:

https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/missou...

Page 14, sections 4, 5, 6, and 7 are the incidents relevant to filming.

With respect to section 5, Akins filmed in the lobby, was asked to stop, and the person who asked him to stop was told that he was in the wrong for saying so. Section 6, he wasn't allowed into a media event because there wasn't a ton of space and he didn't have credentials. Section 7, he was posting video to the PD's and the city's Facebook pages and they removed the videos.

These are discussed on page 34, last paragraph. Seems like Akins is more interested in retaliation charges, and that's what the court is addressing here. The "he has no constitutional right to videotape any public proceedings he wishes to" seems a bit out of place as I re-read it, but I guess it's just establishing a baseline? I'm not sure what specifically the statement is meant to respond to.

The only thing that seems like public proceeding is the media event, and so in that context the judge is saying that I can't just bust in with a smartphone and say I have a constitutional right to record the event.

Thank you for the info!

Wait, where do you see anywhere in the ruling a decision about anything other than whether the judge should've been recused or not...?

Section II B, about the summary judgement and the motion to dismiss.

It's very short because the appeals court ruled that the district court was correct "without opinion".

But again, that literally has nothing to do with filming in court and only whether or not the judge should've recused themself...

Where in "Akins also argues that the district court erred by granting the motions todismiss and for summary judgment filed by the defendants and by denying his ownmotion for partial summary judgment" is there anything about filming anyone?

In that those rulings by the district court dismissed Akin's claims that his rights were violated by police retaliating for his filming.

It's literally linked in the article in full. It's only like 5 pages long. Very clear and obvious that this case had nothing to do with whether you could or couldn't film a public official in public...

Everyone should flag this article. And anyone that upvoted the article should be ashamed of themselves.