Fields v. City of Philadelphia
The Third Circuit held that the First Amendment protects photographing, filming, or otherwise recording police officers performing official duties in public, even when the recorder does not announce a journalistic, critical, or other expressive purpose.
Executive Summary
Fields is the Third Circuit’s foundational right-to-record decision. Its most important contribution is rejecting a narrow rule that would protect recording only when the person can prove an immediate expressive purpose, such as journalism, criticism, protest, or an announced intent to publish.
The consolidated appeal involved two separate plaintiffs. Richard Fields, a Temple University student, photographed officers breaking up a house party from a public sidewalk. Amanda Geraci, a legal observer, attempted to photograph an arrest during an anti-fracking protest. Both alleged that officers retaliated against them for recording police activity.
The district court had concluded that neither plaintiff engaged in protected First Amendment conduct because neither had shown a sufficiently expressive purpose at the moment of recording. The Third Circuit rejected that approach and held that the act of photographing, filming, or otherwise recording police officers performing official duties in public is itself protected First Amendment activity.
A person need not prove that a recording was accompanied by criticism, journalism, protest, publication, or some other separately articulated expressive purpose. Recording public police activity is protected information gathering under the First Amendment.
The Two Encounters
Richard Fields: a photograph from a public sidewalk
In September 2013, Richard Fields, then a Temple University sophomore, was standing on a public sidewalk when he observed Philadelphia police officers across the street breaking up a house party. The nearest officer was approximately fifteen feet away.
Fields used his iPhone to take a photograph of the scene. An officer noticed him taking the picture, made a disparaging comment, and ordered him to leave. Fields refused. The officer arrested him, confiscated his phone, and searched through photographs and videos stored on the device.
Fields was released and cited for obstructing highways and other public passages. The charge was later withdrawn after the officer did not appear at the hearing.
Amanda Geraci: legal observation of an arrest
Amanda Geraci was a member of a police-watch organization and attended an anti-fracking protest at the Philadelphia Convention Center as a trained legal observer. She carried a camera and wore a pink bandana identifying her as a legal observer.
When police moved to arrest a protester, Geraci attempted to move to a location where she could photograph the arrest. According to her evidence, she did not interfere with the officers. An officer nevertheless pushed Geraci against a pillar and held her there for one to three minutes, preventing her from observing or photographing the arrest.
Fields was an ordinary bystander who took a single photograph. Geraci was an organized legal observer attempting to document an arrest. The Third Circuit treated both forms of information gathering as protected.
No Separate Expressive Purpose Is Required
The district court had focused on whether Fields and Geraci were engaged in conduct sufficiently expressive to trigger First Amendment protection. In its view, simply taking a photograph or attempting to record police was not enough unless the plaintiffs could connect the act to an identifiable message, criticism, or other expressive purpose.
The Third Circuit rejected that premise. It explained that the First Amendment protects not only speech itself, but also the process of gathering information that may later be communicated. Recording public officials performing public duties is part of that information-gathering function.
The court therefore refused to make constitutional protection depend on what the recorder intended to do with the image, whether the person was a journalist, whether the person announced criticism of police, or whether the recording was ultimately published.
The act of recording police activity in public receives First Amendment protection without a threshold requirement that the recorder establish an independent expressive purpose.
The Third Circuit’s Right-to-Record Rule
The Third Circuit held that the First Amendment protects the act of photographing, filming, or otherwise recording police officers conducting their official duties in public.
The court situated that right within broader First Amendment principles protecting access to and dissemination of information about government conduct. It also noted the practical importance of civilian recordings, which can expose police misconduct, corroborate officer conduct, provide evidence, and inform public debate.
The court emphasized that every federal circuit to have addressed the question at that time had recognized First Amendment protection for recording police activity in public. It joined that growing consensus.
Officers should not ask whether the person has a “good reason” to record, whether the recording appears journalistic, or whether the recorder has articulated a message. Those questions are generally beside the constitutional point.
Qualified Immunity
Although the Third Circuit recognized the substantive right, the individual officers still received qualified immunity because the court concluded that the right had not been clearly established at the times of the incidents in 2012 and 2013.
The distinction is critical. A court may announce that conduct is constitutionally protected while still concluding that an officer cannot be held personally liable for an earlier incident because the law was not sufficiently clear when that incident occurred.
The court specifically explained that the preexisting law had not given every reasonable officer fair warning that recording public police activity was protected even without a separate expressive purpose.
Fields recognizes the First Amendment right. Its qualified-immunity ruling reflects the state of Third Circuit law before the 2017 decision. Later Third Circuit cases treat Fields as the precedential decision establishing the right prospectively.
What Fields Does—and Does Not—Establish
- The case protects recording police officers performing official duties in public; it does not establish an unrestricted right to record in every government location.
- The decision rejects an expressive-purpose requirement, but it does not eliminate otherwise lawful safety, access, or scene-control restrictions.
- The right to record does not authorize physical obstruction, intrusion into a restricted area, or actual interference with police operations.
- The opinion involved public police activity and should not be mechanically extended to police-station interiors, courthouses, secure government workplaces, or other nonpublic forums.
- The officers received qualified immunity for the 2012 and 2013 incidents because the right had not yet been clearly established in the Third Circuit.
- The qualified-immunity ruling should not be cited as though the right remained unsettled after Fields.
- The case does not make press credentials relevant to constitutional protection; ordinary citizens may invoke the right.
- Fields’s phone search presents separate Fourth Amendment concerns beyond the core right-to-record holding.
Agency Guidance
Primary Sources and Further Reading
This monograph is provided for training and general informational purposes. It is not legal advice and does not replace review of the complete opinion, current statutes, controlling federal and state authority, agency policy, or consultation with prosecutors and agency counsel.
© 2026 Shield Public Safety Training. All rights reserved. Reviewed September 7, 2026.