What court rulings and lawsuits have addressed police use of LRADs against protesters in the United States?
Executive summary
Federal and local courts have directly confronted police use of Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) against protesters, most prominently in Edrei v. Bratton, where a federal district judge and then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that LRAD “area denial” use can constitute excessive force and rejected qualified‑immunity shields for officers, prompting a city settlement and new NYPD policy language [1] [2] [3]. Other lawsuits and litigation threads have probed LRAD harms and policy gaps, while police departments have argued deployment was reasonable crowd control — a competing view the courts have weighed [4] [5].
1. The case that set a national benchmark: Edrei v. Bratton and the Southern District of New York
Plaintiffs sued after a 2014 Black Lives Matter demonstration, alleging that hand‑held LRADs fired at close range caused migraines, ear pain and hearing damage and that the NYPD lacked written LRAD policies or training; U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet ruled that LRADs could be treated as a use-of-force tool akin to stun or concussion devices and allowed excessive‑force and training claims to proceed [1] [6]. The district court’s factual framing emphasized the device’s power — up to 136 decibels at one meter in the model at issue — and the absence of department policy or training when deployed in a crowded Midtown intersection [1].
2. The Second Circuit nails down constitutional doctrine and limits immunity
In a precedential June 2018 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that purposefully using an LRAD in a manner capable of causing serious injury to move non‑violent protesters can violate the Fourteenth Amendment and that officers were not entitled to qualified immunity because the constitutional prohibitions applied to crowd control uses of force [2] [7]. The panel rejected the argument that sound is not an “instrument of force,” reasoning that the LRAD’s area‑denial function produces pain and incapacitation and that reasonable officers would understand the device can inflict a “significant degree of force” [8] [2].
3. Settlement, policy changes, and the limits of judicial remedies
The Edrei litigation ultimately produced a monetary settlement and operational concessions: New York City agreed to pay roughly three‑quarters of a million dollars and to restrict the LRAD deterrent tone while drafting an LRAD policy — although critics noted the settlement did not create ongoing court oversight and left open the device’s public‑address function [3] [4]. The appellate rulings and settlement influenced other advocacy and legal efforts by exposing gaps in training and prompting departments to produce written guidance, but courts stopped short of a nationwide ban and left room for lawful, narrowly tailored uses [3] [4].
4. Other lawsuits, scattered precedents, and the legal landscape going forward
Beyond Edrei, earlier individual lawsuits challenged LRAD use — for example, a civilian suit after LRAD deployment at the 2009 G20 protests in Pittsburgh alleging nausea and ear fluid leakage — and multiple news and advocacy pieces highlighted LRADs’ military origins and potential for permanent hearing harm, creating a mosaic of contested claims rather than uniform precedent [8] [9]. Municipal defenses have consistently argued LRAD deployment was objectively reasonable to clear streets or protect officers, and litigation has thus focused on how and how loudly LRADs were used rather than condemning the devices in all contexts [5] [4]. Separate but related litigation over “less‑lethal” crowd weapons continues in other circuits — for instance recent federal orders restricting some projectile launchers in Los Angeles — but those decisions are about different technologies and have been influenced by circuit law on crowd dispersal generally [10].
Conclusion: a patchwork of doctrinal rules, remedies, and open questions
Courts — most consequentially the Southern District of New York and the Second Circuit in Edrei — have established that LRADs can be instruments of force subject to constitutional limits and that officers can be held liable when they use area‑denial tones in ways that risk serious injury, but the law remains fact‑specific, settlements have been the principal concrete remedy, and national doctrine beyond the Second Circuit is still developing as police departments and courts grapple with balancing crowd control and protest rights [1] [2] [3].