If you have watched so-called "First Amendment audit" videos, you will have probably noticed how often government employees don't like it when a private citizens brings a camera into a governmental building, such a postal office, a city hall or, especially, a court house. Quite often the person is demanded to stop filming or leave the building, and if he refuses, usually the police is called.
If you pay attention you'll also notice that they never, ever charge the person for "filming inside a governmental building" or anything of the sort. It's always "trespassing", "disorderly conduct", or some other charge that has absolutely nothing to do with photography.
Do you know why they never try to charge the person with a crime related to the photography itself? Because there exists no such law. There is no law in the United States that forbids photography and filming within the publicly accessible areas of governmental buildings (very much including the publicly accessible areas of court houses).
Thus, in order to get rid of the undesirable person and his undesirable camera, they have to resort to accusing him of some other crime. And "trespassing" is the perfect excuse.
The thing is, public employees in charge of the building are free to trespass anybody they want, for whatever reason they want, and they don't even have to state any particular reason.
And mind you: These are public buildings, not some private property. And these auditors are always only in the ares of the building open to the public, ie. they never go into any restricted areas.
Yet, somehow, for some reason, public employees have the right to trespass anybody they want, for whatever reason they want (or no reason at all), from the publicly accessible areas of a public building. Pretty much without any limit. They don't need to state a reason, they don't need a reason. Their word is effectively law: If they trespass someone, that someone has to leave or be arrested. No reasons needed to be given.
Rather obviously this is highly problematic: It allows government employees to, essentially, enact and impose any de facto laws they want, bypassing the laws of the country, and enforce these made-up laws with the threat of trespassing. The most typical example that exists is precisely photography: There is no law supporting the banning of photography in the publicly accessible areas of public buildings, but the government employees can make up their own laws as they wish, and enforce them with the blanket trespassing threat.
And no, public photography is not the only thing that some government employees and law enforcement officials have effectively banned from their premises, using "trespassing" as the tool to enact it. Photography is by far the most common thing, but there are examples of many other things.
And what exactly stops some officials from, for example, discriminating against people of a particular race? If they can trespass anybody they want, for whatever reason they want, without having to even state what the reason is, what stops them from trespassing eg. all black people from the building?
Quite clearly the trespassing laws, when it comes to public officials trespassing people from public buildings, is in dire need of clarification and restrictions: Public officials shouldn't have the legal right to trespass people from a public building without officially stating a lawful reason to do so (and this lawful reason should meet certain minimum requirements of severity before the trespassing becomes justifiable. Eg. merely "causing concern" shouldn't be a valid reason, and "disorderly conduct" should have actual proof that it's the case.)
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