A federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s injunction blocking Indiana’s widely debated 25-foot police buffer zone law, ruling that the statute is “unconstitutionally vague” and “susceptible to arbitrary enforcement.”

In a decision issued Tuesday, a unanimous 7th Circuit panel found the law lacks clear standards for police conduct, allowing officers to criminalize behavior based solely on personal discretion.

“The Fourteenth Amendment will not tolerate a law subjecting pedestrians to arrest merely because a police officer had a bad breakfast – no matter how bitter the coffee or how soggy the scrambled eggs,” Judge Doris Pryor wrote for the court.

The law, passed in 2023, makes it a Class C misdemeanor to knowingly approach within 25 feet of a law enforcement officer after being to

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