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China (Hong Kong): conviction and 20-year sentence of the media owner Jimmy Lai under the National Security Law, 2025 to 2026
On December 15, 2025, the High Court of Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China with its own courts, convicted Jimmy Lai, founder of the newspaper Apple Daily, on two counts of "conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign force…
Detention and violence · Stage Eliminate · Head of government John Lee · Sustained
United States (Louisiana): Federal court order blocking enforcement of the police buffer zone law, January 2025
On January 31, 2025, Judge John W. deGravelles of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, a federal trial court, blocked enforcement of the state's 25-foot (7.6-metre) police buffer zone law with a preliminar…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Jeff Landry · Ongoing
United States (Florida): Halo Law buffer zone around first responders, January 2025
On January 1, 2025, the "Halo Law" took effect in Florida, a state in the south-eastern United States. It creates a 25-foot (7.6-metre) buffer zone around first responders, such as police officers, firefighters and paramedics, while they a…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Ron DeSantis · Sustained
United States (Louisiana): 25-foot buffer zone law around police officers, May 2024
On May 24, 2024, the governor of Louisiana, a state in the southern United States, Jeff Landry, signed a law that makes it a crime to stay within 25 feet (about 7.6 metres) of a working law enforcement officer after the officer has told a…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Jeff Landry · Ongoing
Federal court strikes down Arizona's law banning recording police within 8 feet
Arizona's 2022 law making it a crime to record police within eight feet after a warning was struck down by a federal judge in July 2023, who found it chilled a substantial amount of activity protected by the First Amendment and was not nec…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Doug Ducey · Reversed
Court orders RCMP to stop restricting press access at Fairy Creek logging blockades
A British Columbia court found the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had failed to justify wide exclusion zones that kept journalists away from its enforcement of a logging injunction at the Fairy Creek old-growth blockades, and ordered police…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government John Horgan · Reversed
Ethiopia: internet and phone service cut across Tigray
Ethiopia's government cut internet and telephone service across the Tigray region when war broke out there in November 2020, leaving the region without communication for months and forcing reporters to travel there to learn what was happen…
Shutdowns and blocking · Stage Silence · Head of government Abiy Ahmed · Ongoing
Minnesota State Patrol arrests CNN crew live on air in Minneapolis
Minnesota State Patrol troopers arrested CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez and his crew on live television while they covered protests after the police killing of George Floyd. Officers gave no reason before handcuffing the three men; Governo…
Detention and violence · Stage Punish · Head of government Tim Walz · Reversed
United States Supreme Court strikes down Florida law barring a reporter from discussing his own grand jury testimony
In 1990, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a Florida law that threatened newspaper reporter Michael Smith with criminal prosecution for discussing his own testimony before a state grand jury investigating local officials.…
Secrets and espionage laws · Stage Silence · Head of government Bob Martinez · Reversed
United States judge bars the press from reporting a murder suspect's confession before trial
On October 27, 1975, Nebraska District Judge Hugh Stuart ordered news organizations covering a mass murder near Sutherland, Nebraska, not to report a suspect's confession or other evidence before jury selection. The Supreme Court of the Un…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government J. James Exon · Reversed
United States: Texas judge allows televised pretrial hearing in the Billie Sol Estes case; Supreme Court later limits cameras in criminal courtrooms
A Texas state judge in Tyler allowed live television and photography at pretrial hearings and part of the criminal trial of financier Billie Sol Estes, over defense objections. On June 7, 1965, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Price Daniel · Reversed
United States: Montgomery, Alabama commissioner sues The New York Times for libel over a civil rights advertisement
L. B. Sullivan, an elected Montgomery, Alabama city commissioner who supervised the police department, sued The New York Times for libel over a 1960 civil rights advertisement and won a $500,000 jury verdict. On March 9, 1964, the Supreme…
Lawsuits against the press · Stage Punish · Head of government John Patterson · Reversed
United States: Tallahatchie County, Mississippi sheriff segregates Black reporters at the Emmett Till murder trial, September 1955
When the murder trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam opened in Sumner, Mississippi, on September 19, 1955, Tallahatchie County Sheriff Clarence Strider assigned Black reporters covering the trial, along with Michigan congressman Charles Digg…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Hugh L. White · Sustained
United States: Louisiana taxes large newspapers' advertising revenue; the tax is struck down in Grosjean v. American Press Co.
Louisiana taxed the gross receipts that businesses earned from advertising in newspapers with circulations above 20,000 copies a week, a threshold that caught the state's largest papers. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled unanimo…
Funding and ownership pressure · Stage Pressure · Head of government Oscar K. Allen · Reversed
Minnesota closes The Saturday Press in 1927; the Supreme Court strikes down the law in 1931
A Hennepin County attorney used Minnesota's 1925 Public Nuisance Law to shut down The Saturday Press, a Minneapolis paper accusing officials of corruption. In 1931 the Supreme Court of the United States struck the law down, ruling that sto…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Theodore Christianson · Reversed
United States: Supreme Court upholds Benjamin Gitlow's conviction under New York's Criminal Anarchy Law, 1925
The United States Supreme Court voted seven to two on June 8, 1925 to uphold the conviction of socialist publisher Benjamin Gitlow, who had been tried and sentenced to prison under New York's 1902 Criminal Anarchy Law for distributing 16,0…
Secrets and espionage laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Alfred E. Smith · Upheld by a court