Left-wing activists who style themselves as legal observers enjoy no special constitutional status when they confront police or federal agents, despite their claims to the contrary.
According to Western Journal, the controversy intensified after the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of legal observer Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minnesota, an incident that quickly drew condemnation from politicians and progressive activists. The term legal observer has long been used by leftist groups to describe individuals who monitor police conduct at protests, but legal scholars stress that the label is political branding, not a shield against the consequences of obstructing law enforcement.
These observers have the same rights as any other citizen to observe and record law enforcement conduct in public, Timothy Snowball, a senior attorney with the conservative Legal Insurrection Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. However, the legal line is between observation and obstruction. There is a wide gulf between observation and purposefully trying to prevent law enforcement from doing their duty.
Manhattan Institute constitutional scholar and attorney Ilya Shapiro underscored that point, rejecting the notion that activists can invent a privileged class of demonstrators simply by declaring themselves observers. There are no special or unique protections. Legal observers can (and should be able to) observe and record, but they cant interfere with law enforcement activities thats a crime, Shapiro told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Video from the Minneapolis shooting shows ICE agents surrounding Goods vehicle as it sat partially blocking the roadway, repeatedly ordering her to exit the car. She refused to comply and then suddenly accelerated toward one of the agents, who responded by firing multiple shots.
The Department of Homeland Security later reported that the agent suffered a torso injury from the impact of Goods car, underscoring the physical danger officers can face when suspects escalate. In the footage, Goods female companion can be seen filming the agents on her phone and urging escalation, telling Good, drive, baby, drive, moments before the vehicle lunged forward.
Snowball explained that there are numerous ways these self-described observers can cross the line from lawful monitoring into criminal conduct. He noted that ignoring a lawful order to disperse, refusing to maintain a safe distance from officers, or physically interfering with an arrest can all trigger legitimate enforcement actions.
However, the prohibitions on interference also go in the other direction if law enforcement attempts to use its authority or force to stop the public from lawful observation or recording when there is no obstruction taking place, he said, emphasizing that citizens do retain the right to film police in public spaces. But in the most recent incidents, the former appears to be the case, rather than the latter.
Minnesota ICE Watch, a group that includes Good and other activists who track federal immigration enforcement, has aggressively promoted confrontations with ICE on social media. The group posted an Instagram video of a raid at a gas station in which a protester clashed with a federal agent while apparently attempting to film him at close range.
The G3STAPO TERRORIST Hit a man and then jumped him for LEGALLY OBSERVING, the Instagram caption claimed, deploying inflammatory rhetoric that likened American officers to Nazi secret police. Yet the video itself shows the man pushing the agents arm after being told to step back, an apparent act of physical interference that prompted the agent to make an arrest.
The ICE Watch account also circulated a separate clip from the past week showing the aftermath of a collision between an ICE vehicle and a car driven by another legal observer, immediately blaming authorities for the crash without providing context. In that footage, agents are seen restraining the driver on the ground, a scene activists framed as further evidence of supposed federal overreach.
Snowball warned that activists are increasingly using the legal observer label as a political weapon rather than a neutral description of conduct. Activists and protesters can weaponize a made-up special legal observer status by crossing the line I mentioned and specifically interfering with law enforcement, or provoking law enforcement, he said, arguing that such tactics are often designed to create viral confrontations rather than ensure accountability.
There is also, as in many cases, a general ignorance of the law and Constitution at issue when it comes to many of these legal observers, Snowball added, suggesting that progressive legal organizations have misled their own volunteers about the limits of their rights. That ignorance, he argued, does not excuse behavior that endangers officers or undermines lawful enforcement actions.
The phrase legal observer itself was popularized and even trademarked by the left-wing National Lawyers Guild, which drew inspiration from the Black Panther Partys armed patrols of police in the 1960s. Over the past several decades, many self-identified legal observers have been detained or arrested at left-wing demonstrations across the United States, often insisting they were merely watching and recording, while prosecutors have rarely pursued charges, according to news accounts and activist reports.
In 2020, federal appeals judges in Oregon ruled that legal observers could remain at Black Lives Matter protests so long as they were not committing crimes, effectively granting them the same access as journalists but not elevating them above the law. That decision affirmed that the First Amendment protects observation and reporting, yet it did not create a special legal caste of activists immune from dispersal orders, arrest, or prosecution when they interfere with police operations.
Many appear to be entirely unaware or misled as to the legal issues in question, and may genuinely believe they have legal rights they do not actually possess, Snowball told the Daily Caller News Foundation, pointing to a broader problem of activist legal training that blurs the line between rights and privileges. But as we learned in the first year of law school: ignorance of the law is no excuse.
For conservatives who support the rule of law and the equal application of constitutional protections, the Good case and similar incidents highlight a growing problem: activist networks attempting to carve out de facto immunity for their own allies under the guise of observation.
The Constitution protects citizens who peacefully record and criticize government officials, but it does not grant progressive protesters a special pass to block roads, defy lawful commands, or endanger officers simply because they claim a title invented by left-wing legal groups.
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