A federal appeals court on Monday set aside limits a lower judge had placed on federal agents and their ability to use crowd control tactics on anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the lower court ruling was too broad and unworkable. It blocked the ruling while the case develops further.
Judge Katherine Menendez, a Biden appointee, had ruled that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was too quick to blast protesters with pepper spray,” and had been too aggressive in shutting down anti-ICE activists who had been trailing federal officers in their vehicles.
She said she had viewed video that troubled her, seemingly showing ICE officers deploying pepper spray against protesters who were walking away and weren’t a threat.
She said it was broad enough that she felt comfortable issuing universal restrictions on some crowd control tactics.
But the 8th Circuit judges came to a somewhat different conclusion.
“We accessed and viewed the same videos the district court did,” the circuit judges said in an unsigned opinion. “What they show is observers and protestors engaging in a wide range of conduct, some of it peaceful but much of it not. They also show federal agents responding in various ways.”
The appeals court said that range of activities meant that the court couldn’t issue such a broad new limit.
The panel also said the injunction “is too vague” and would leave federal officers in the impossible position of trying to make split-second decisions with the threat of a judge’s contempt of court ruling hanging over them.
“The videos underscore how difficult it would be for them to decide who has crossed the line: they show a fast-changing mix of peaceful and obstructive conduct, with many protestors getting in officers’ faces and blocking their vehicles as they conduct their activities, only for some of them to then rejoin the crowd and intermix with others who were merely recording and observing the scene,” the appeals court said.
That ruling is the latest in a series of cases where protesters have challenged federal tactics but been rebuffed by appeals courts.
The American Civil Liberties Union decried the decision.
“As federal agents claim they can act with impunity and kill people in our streets, this ruling is incredibly disappointing,” said Deepinder Mayell, executive director of ACLU of Minnesota.
Judge Menendez, the district judge whose ruling was put on hold, is also overseeing Minnesota’s lawsuit asking for an order booting federal immigration agents out of the state.
During a hearing Monday in that case, she struggled with where to draw lines on the enforcement surge.
