New Orleans, LA Privacy & Surveillance: Facial Recognition Ban (2026)

Sec. 147-2(b)(1) bans face surveillance systems outright alongside cell-site simulators, characteristic tracking systems and predictive policing technology, and subsection (a) bars any city official or entity from obtaining, possessing, accessing, selling or using such technology, or contracting with a third party to do so on the city's behalf. Subsection (d) carves out an exception: NOPD may request facial recognition only to investigate the prior occurrence of specific enumerated violent crimes under Title 14 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes, including murder, aggravated rape, armed robbery, carjacking, human trafficking, and domestic abuse battery, and subsection (d) expressly states facial recognition "shall not be used" for any crime not on that list, including abortion-related offenses or consensual same-sex conduct.

Every request must be approved under current NOPD policy (subsection (e)), and subsection (f) bars facial recognition evidence alone from establishing probable cause for an arrest, the image source and reasoning must be documented in a police report. Subsection (g) separately bars using facial recognition as a general surveillance tool, and subsection (c) lets NOPD use facial-recognition-derived evidence from an authorized investigation only if NOPD itself did not generate or request it. NOPD, working with the Louisiana State Analytical and Fusion Exchange, must file a quarterly report to the Clerk of Council and the Criminal Justice Committee chair listing every facial-recognition request, the requesting officer's name and badge number, the enumerated crime cited, the suspect's age, gender and race, and whether the request produced a match or an arrest (subsection (i)).