Porat filed suit in federal district court arguing, among other things, that the guards and police officers “violated his First Amendment rights by issuing him an appearance ticket for trespass in retaliation for his exercise of conduct protected under the First Amendment.” But U.S.
Police eventually issued Porat an appearance ticket for trespassing.
Another security guard approached and told Porat he was under civilian arrest. He was asked by the guard why he was taking photos, to which Porat replied that “he was taking pictures for aesthetic and recreational reasons.” When the guard asked to see the pictures and some form of identification, Porat refused. Porat continued to take pictures and went on to enter a public courtyard on the premises. Porat was approached by a Lincoln Towers security guard and was told that management policy did not permit nonresidents to take photographs of the buildings. Porat was walking along a public street in New York City when he stopped to take pictures of a group of residential buildings known as Lincoln Towers. So speech or conduct (taking photographs) that satisfies both of the elements above is allowed and protected in the “public forum.” Using this guide, we can look to the courts and find one type of photography that is not protected by the First Amendment: private recreational photography that is for one’s own personal use. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Group (1995) Six years later, the Supreme Court reiterated, “To achieve First Amendment protection, a plaintiff must show that he possessed: (1) a message to be communicated and (2) an audience to receive that message, regardless of the medium in which the message is to be expressed.” Hurley v. “In deciding whether particular conduct possesses sufficient communicative elements to bring the First Amendment into play, we have asked whether n intent to convey a particularized message was present, and the likelihood was great that the message would be understood by those who viewed it.” Texas v. “The First Amendment literally forbids the abridgment only of ‘speech,’ but we have long recognized that its protection does not end at the spoken or written word … we have acknowledged that conduct may be ‘sufficiently imbued with elements of communication to fall within the scope of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.’
The rulings closest to that issue involve expressive speech and conduct. No Supreme Court decisions directly address a photographer’s First Amendment rights. What rights do photographers actually have? Can limitations be placed on them? Are they allowed to take pictures of anything that is in public view? Does it matter if the one taking pictures is a journalist or a private citizen? Photographs as speech Such incidents lead to some interesting questions regarding the rights of photographers. Along with these examples are numerous other occasions in which photographers were temporarily detained and questioned for taking pictures of police activity or even buildings. A photographer for a newspaper in California was arrested while taking pictures of an accident scene on a public highway. A photographer in New York was arrested for videotaping a protest in a public plaza. Just in the last few years, some interesting stories have cropped up in the news concerning photographers. You would think that if you are in a public space and you can see something - an object, a person, an incident - then you could also photograph or film it.