Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- July 12, 2020
- Case number
- 3:20-cv-01035
- Case Status
- Settled
- Type of case
- Civil
- Assailant
- Law enforcement
- Was the journalist targeted?
- Yes
Assault
Federal law enforcement officers at a July 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, Oregon. Photojournalist Mathieu Lewis-Rolland was hit with crowd-control munitions while documenting one of the nightly demonstrations earlier that summer.
Journalists settle with Portland, Oregon, over 2020 protest violations
A group of journalists who were assaulted and had their equipment seized by police officers in Portland, Oregon, while covering Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020 have settled a federal lawsuit with the city for nearly $1 million. The Portland City Council approved the settlement payment on March 5, 2025.
The $938,000 settlement also reinforces protections through 2028 for journalists who document protests in Portland, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case on the journalists’ behalf.
The protections were initially put in place by a preliminary injunction in July 2020, which barred the Portland Police Bureau from arresting journalists or seizing their equipment without probable cause, and exempted journalists from dispersal orders.
A similar injunction was later entered against the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals Service personnel. That order was dissolved in March 2022, when the court ruled that fewer, smaller protests in Portland had reduced the need for it.
Photojournalist Mathieu Lewis-Rolland was documenting protests on May 31, 2020, when police fired projectiles and tear gas at him. He and a group of other journalists, as well as two legal observers, filed their suit in federal court a month later, alleging that violent behavior by law enforcement was intended to intimidate the press and suppress reporting on officers’ misconduct.
On July 12, Lewis-Rolland was filming live on Facebook when one or more federal agents shot him 10 times with impact munitions, causing multiple lacerations and contusions — weeks before the preliminary injunction was extended to federal personnel.
The injunction targeting Portland police was dissolved in May 2023 after the court dismissed some of the plaintiffs’ claims against the city, pointing to changes in state law governing police crowd-control techniques, including limiting the use of tear gas.
The Portland Police Bureau had also updated its directive on responding to lawful demonstrations to include protections similar to those established by the injunction, according to the ACLU.
Attorney Matthew Borden, whose firm BraunHagey & Borden also represented the journalists, celebrated the protections established by the agreement.
“Freedom of the press is a constitutional check against abuse of government power—one that has become all the more critical in light of the current federal regime,” he said. “Nobody should have to face the nightly storm of violence that our clients braved to capture what actually happened at the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Portland.”
Photojournalist Mathieu Lewis-Rolland was hit with multiple rounds of non-lethal projectiles fired by federal agents while covering protests in Portland, Oregon, in the early morning hours of July 12, 2020.
Protests have broken out across the U.S. in response to police violence and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement following the May 25 death of George Floyd. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is documenting assaults, arrests and other incidents involving journalists covering protests across the country.
The Portland protests, held nightly since late May, had grown more intense as the presence of federal law enforcement increased in early July. A temporary restraining order on July 2 that barred the Portland police from harming or impeding journalists wasn’t expanded to include federal agents until July 23.
At 1:58 a.m. on July 12, Lewis-Rolland began filming live on Facebook, documenting as federal agents emerged from the U.S. Courthouse and started moving the crowd toward the west. About one minute into the video, a federal officer can be seen raising his gun at Lewis-Rolland, but not firing. When Lewis-Rolland reached the intersection of Southwest Fourth Avenue and Southwest Main Street, about a block from the Courthouse, he turned to take a photograph of a teargas canister rolling into the intersection when he was shot multiple times. The impact of the non-lethal plastic munitions ripped his T-shirt in at least two places.
In a declaration in support of the ACLU lawsuit that led to the TRO, Lewis-Rolland said that one or more federal agents shot him 10 times with impact munitions. He shared photographs of his injuries with the ACLU, including one large laceration and two smaller contusions on his right side, a laceration on his right elbow, two large lacerations on his back and four smaller contusions on his left side. Munitions recovered from the intersection are also pictured.
“I was not posing any type of threat to Agent Doe or anyone else. I was not even facing him,” Lewis-Rolland said in the declaration.
While a number of federal agencies had officers in Portland in July, it wasn’t clear which agency the officers were from. The Department of Homeland Security, which coordinated the federal presence in Portland, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
