Demster v. Blanche

In September 2025, President Trump and Tennessee Governor Lee established the Memphis Safe Task Force, a 31-agency task force that has upended daily life in Memphis. Thousands of federal, state, and local agents are carrying out mass traffic and street stops and breaking into homes. Memphis residents have described the Task Force as an “occupation” that is terrorizing communities of color across the city.

In response, Memphis residents encountering Task Force agents in public have stopped to gather information about and record Task Force activities. By documenting Task Force operations, these residents hope to support detainees and their families, raise awareness of Task Force abuses, and hold government leaders accountable for tearing families apart and sowing fear across their community.

Gathering information about and recording law enforcement operations is protected by the First Amendment. Nonetheless, Task Force agents are systematically retaliating against those who record them, including threatening to arrest them, stopping and questioning them without reasonable suspicion of any crime, sitting outside their homes, and even using excessive force against and arresting them. Task Force agents are also routinely invoking Tennessee’s “Halo Law,” which criminalizes approaching law enforcement officers within 25 feet after one warning, to force observers back to where they cannot clearly view or record Task Force operations.

On May 13, 2026, the ACLU, ACLU of Tennessee, and law firms Selendy Gay and BraunHagey & Borden filed this lawsuit in the Western District of Tennessee on behalf of four Memphis residents. Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit to end the Task Force’s policy, pattern and practice of retaliating against them in response to their First Amendment-protected activities. They also challenge the application of the Halo Law to their First-Amendment protected activities.