Recording Tennessee Police: No Right-to-Record Statute, but a 25-Foot Approach Offense

Start with what is missing. Unlike California and New York, Tennessee has no statute declaring a right to photograph or record a law enforcement officer performing public duties. Searching the full text of the Tennessee Code for record, photograph, film or videotape within ten words of "law enforcement officer" returns only records-inspection and evidence statutes such as § 40-6-111 and § 10-7-503. The right to film police in a public place in Tennessee rests on the First Amendment and on federal case law, not on the Tennessee Code.

The Code does now regulate how close you may stand. Public Chapter 409 of 2025 (Senate Bill 30), which passed the Senate on April 21, 2025 and took effect July 1, 2025, added § 39-16-612 to Title 39, Chapter 16, Part 6. Subsection (a) makes it an offense to intentionally approach "within twenty-five feet (25′)" of an officer after the officer has ordered the person to stop approaching or to retreat, and only where the officer is lawfully engaged in official duties involving one of three listed situations: a lawful traffic stop, an active investigation of the scene of an alleged crime, or an ongoing and immediate threat to public safety.

The wording matters to anyone holding a phone. The offense is approaching, not recording, and it does not exist until an order has been given. Standing thirty feet away and filming is outside the section entirely. So is standing still at twenty feet when no officer has told you to back up, because nothing has been approached after an order. What the statute reaches is closing distance after a lawful order in one of the three named contexts. Subsection (b) supplies an affirmative defense where the order "was not received or understood by the person and was not capable of being received or understood under the conditions and circumstances that existed at the time of the issuance of the order," which is written for noisy, chaotic scenes.

A violation of § 39-16-612(a) is a Class B misdemeanor under subsection (c). Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-35-111(e)(2) fixes that at not more than six months and a fine of up to five hundred dollars, or both. Note the asymmetry with the identification offense added by section 4 of the same act: giving a false name under § 39-16-611 is only a Class C misdemeanor with a fifty dollar maximum fine, so Tennessee treats crowding an officer as the more serious conduct.

On sound, Tennessee is permissive. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-601(b)(5) makes it lawful "for a person not acting under color of law to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication, where the person is a party to the communication or where one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the interception, unless the communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing any criminal or tortious act in violation of the constitution or laws of this state." A driver or bystander who is part of the exchange may therefore record the audio without asking. Recording a conversation you are not part of is a different matter: an unlawful interception under § 39-13-601(a) is a Class D felony under § 39-13-602, carrying two to twelve years and a fine of up to five thousand dollars under § 40-35-111(b)(4).

Keep the camera passive. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-16-602(a) makes it an offense to prevent or obstruct an officer from effecting a stop, frisk, halt, arrest or search "by using force against the law enforcement officer or another." Holding a phone is not force, but grabbing, blocking or pulling is, and subsection (b) forecloses the argument that the underlying stop was unlawful, except as provided in § 39-11-611. That charge is a Class B misdemeanor, or a Class A misdemeanor if a deadly weapon is used.

Approaching within twenty-five feet after an order to stop or retreat is a Class B misdemeanor under § 39-16-612(c), punishable under § 40-35-111(e)(2) by up to six months and a five hundred dollar fine. The charge is brought by the officer on scene and heard in the general sessions court for the county. The affirmative defense in § 39-16-612(b) is raised at trial and turns on whether the order could have been received or understood in the conditions that existed. If you interfere by force rather than by proximity, the charge becomes obstruction under § 39-16-602, a Class B misdemeanor rising to a Class A misdemeanor when a deadly weapon is used, and it is no defense that the stop was unlawful.

Secretly recording a conversation you are not part of is prosecuted under § 39-13-601(a) as a Class D felony under § 39-13-602, two to twelve years and a fine of up to five thousand dollars. Tennessee law provides no statutory damages remedy for an officer who wrongly orders a lawful filmer to stop, so that claim must be brought as a federal civil rights action.