From Law 360:

The Tenth Circuit ruled in March that Denver police officers are immune from a lawsuit alleging they detained a man and searched his tablet after he video recorded them arresting a suspect. Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal in May found in a similar suit that Boynton Beach police were justified when they arrested a mother recording her son’s arrest.

Both decisions sidestepped the issue of whether citizens have a constitutional right to record the police in public, according to experts, who say the courts have generally affirmed such a right.

But the rulings, which several of these experts called “outliers,” further confuse an already unclear area of the law, and some attorneys worry they could discourage people from recording police misconduct or encourage officers to try and stop those who do press “record.” And that could hamper recent efforts at police reform, which have largely been propelled by these videos.

One of these cases could even find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to experts.

But that progress could be jeopardized by decisions like the ones in the Tenth Circuit and Florida. It’s already “very difficult” to hold police accountable for misconduct, especially when it comes to the “blurry line” between recording police and interfering with them, Sykes said.

And those two courts may have just made that line blurrier, experts say.