In a bold legal move, four Memphis residents have taken action against both U.S. and Tennessee officials, claiming they have faced harassment, wrongful arrests, and physical abuse while engaging in activities that should be safeguarded under the First Amendment. These activities include observing and recording the actions of law enforcement officers within their city.
The lawsuit, presented in a federal court on Wednesday, specifically targets the Memphis Safe Task Force. This task force, composed of agents from 13 different federal agencies, was dispatched to the city under the directives of former President Donald Trump. Their mission: to combat crime in collaboration with Tennessee State Troopers and the Tennessee National Guard.
Since the task force’s deployment in late September, a substantial number of traffic stops, warrant services, and fugitive searches have been conducted by the combined forces of federal, state, and local law enforcement. The lawsuit highlights that over 120,000 traffic stops have taken place in Memphis, a city with a population of approximately 610,000, predominantly Black residents.
The legal complaint argues that, under the guise of crime control, task force agents have disrupted the everyday activities of Memphis citizens, often stopping and intimidating them. In retaliation, the plaintiffs and other Memphians have resorted to gathering information and recording the actions of these agents as a form of oversight and accountability.
In response to these allegations, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a statement on Wednesday, addressing the concerns raised by the lawsuit.
“In eight months, the Memphis Safe Task Force has made over 9,000 arrests, including 951 known gang members, and located 150 missing children, drastically increasing public safety in the Memphis community. The Department will not tolerate any action that puts our law enforcement officers at risk. We strongly disagree with the allegations in the lawsuit and remain committed to fair, impartial, and professional law enforcement practices to keep Memphians and the American people safe.”
Hunter Demster, a Memphis resident and plaintiff, says he regularly sees the task force stopping cars in his neighborhood, which has a large Hispanic population. In one interaction, he was surrounded by task force agents after he filmed a traffic stop and told the people in the car that they had a right not to speak to police.
“It is a terrifying feeling,” Demster said. “I did nothing illegal. I used my First Amendment protected rights to hold up a phone and say some ‘know your rights’ information.”
Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberty Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said the Tennessee law is written so broadly that officers have wide discretion to invoke it against observers even when the observers are not impeding their actions.
“When observers go to the scene of task force activity and they are observing, they’re gathering information,” Kim said. “They are picking up their phones and cameras and documenting what’s happening. That’s all core protected First Amendment activity. And it’s not a basis for the government to essentially react in the way that they’re reacting.”
Federal officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, former Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have visited Memphis to praise the task force. Miller in October predicted the surge in law enforcement would make the city “safer than any of you could ever possibly imagine” and that “businesses and investment are going to pour in, and Memphis will be richer than ever before.”
The task force is part of a larger effort by Trump to use National Guard troops and surge federal law enforcement in cities, particularly ones controlled by Democrats. Following troop deployments in the District of Columbia and Los Angeles, he referred to Portland, Oregon, as “war-ravaged” and threatened apocalyptic force in Chicago. Speaking last year to U.S. military leaders in Virginia, Trump proposed using cities as training grounds for the armed forces.
The lawsuit accuses task force agents of systematically retaliating against the four plaintiffs and other members of the public engaged in similar observations. It claims the threats and harassment are the “direct result of federal policy” that views observing federal agents performing their duties in public as a threat of harm to those agents. The lawsuit also claims that federal and state officials have failed to train their agents not to retaliate against citizens engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare that retaliation against the plaintiffs for observing and recording law enforcement activity is unconstitutional and to prohibit the agents from further retaliation. It also targets a Tennessee law that requires observers to stand at least 25 feet (7.6 meters) away from law enforcement officers, if they are warned to do so, or face arrest. The suit asks the court to declare unconstitutional the use of the “Halo Law” against defendants who are not interfering with agents or impeding their duties.