CHICAGO — A federal appeals court has struck down Indiana’s police buffer zone law, ruling that it is unconstitutionally vague and could lead to arbitrary enforcement, IndyStar reported.
In a decision issued Aug. 5, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the 2023 law, which established a 25-foot buffer zone around on-duty police officers, violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process protections, according to the report. The ruling did not address First Amendment concerns raised by media organizations and civil liberties groups.
Writing for the court, Judge Doris Pryor said the statute gave officers too much discretion to issue arbitrary orders and criminalize otherwise lawful behavior, such as asking for directions or walking past a patrol scene.
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Lawyers defending the statute conceded that officers could order people to stop approaching for reasons as trivial as having a “bad breakfast.” In response, Pryor wrote, that reasoning will not stand “no matter how bitter the coffee or soggy the scrambled eggs.”
Enforcement of the law had already been paused under a federal injunction issued in September 2024, which deemed the statute too vague to be fairly enforced, according to the report.
The law, passed as House Bill 1186 in April 2023, made it a Class C misdemeanor to approach within 25 feet of an on-duty officer after being told to stop.
In a separate ruling in May, the same appeals court upheld the law against a First Amendment challenge.
It remains to be determined whether the law will be permanently blocked for all residents of Indiana or only for those directly involved in the lawsuit. A 2025 U.S. Supreme Court decision limited the ability of federal courts to issue broad injunctions beyond named plaintiffs, potentially narrowing the impact of such rulings.
Similar legal challenges to police buffer laws are ongoing in Louisiana and Tennessee, according to the report.
Do you believe this law and others like it are justifiable for officer safety or are they overbroad, as the Indiana court ruled?
