Protesters Assemble: What Are Your Rights?

In light of current events prompting protests in Washington State and cities and towns nationwide, we are republishing this blog post from May 16, 2019 and June 3, 2020 with some updated and added content.

If you read or watch the news these days, you’re bound to see a report of a protest happening somewhere in the world. Groups, such as the Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC), collect and analyze data on political crowds at “marches, protests, strikes, demonstrations, riots, and other actions.” CCC is crowdsourcing and publishing crowd data for recent political protests, including publishing data in journals such as Social Movement Studies (Protests in the United States on Palestine and Israel, 2023–2024). They have tracked uprisings around causes like the deaths of George Floyd and other Americans, the housing crisis, and climate change.

Whether it’s for civil rights, education, the environment, immigration, or healthcare, there truly are a lot of people hitting the streets to demonstrate their beliefs. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the “right of the people to peaceably assemble.” However, many states, including Washington, have introduced bills to crack down on protesting. Most recently SB 5819, “ensuring paid protestor services are considered a temporary staffing service subject to state retail sales and use taxes” has been introduced in the 2026 legislative session. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law tracks state and federal initiatives that restrict the right to peaceful assembly.

What do you need to know about your rights to protest before you peacefully assemble? Read on for resources:

· Are you organizing, attending, or videotaping a protest? The national ACLU Protesters’ Rights site covers all three. Their “Know Your Rights” guides also covers issues from **LGBTQ rights and immigrant rights, to students’ rights, disability rights and voting rights**.

· Closer to home, the King County Law Library’s Protesters’ Rights: Legal Considerations infographic addresses protected speech, arrest, right to counsel, and more.

· For another know-your-rights guide specific to police encounters, check out “You Have the Right to Remain Silent” by the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Also available in Spanish, Arabic, Bengali, Urdu, and Persian, these printable resources are meant to be used on-the-go.

· NLG also has a Know Your Rights guide and video for protestors. The guide is also available in Spanish, Arabic, and Farsi. Their Protest Tools page offers mental health resources, legal hotlines, and defense funds. You can also find out how to request a legal observer through their Legal Observer Program.

· Some states have laws that require people to provide their name to law enforcement. Do you know if your state has these “stop and identify” laws, and what they are? A 2018 publication from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center provides a list of states with stop and ID laws, and cites to specific statutes in those states. Check out their **guide for noncitizen protesters**.

· ACLU Washington’s “What to Do If You Are Stopped by the Police” guide covers the stop and ID requirements for our state. Washington State law requires drivers to identify themselves during traffic stops and certain other situations but otherwise is not considered a stop and identify state.

· The National Police Accountability Project has written a Know Your Rights guide for interactions with National Guard and federal law enforcement, and the Washington ACLU includes a Know Your Rights with Federal Troops in Washington page on their website.

Here are some additional resources that address other questions our reference staff have received related to protesting:

· The Insurrection Act of 1807 as revised in the United States Code

· The Posse Comitatus Act as revised in the United States Code

· Seditious conspiracy statute at 18 USC 2384

· National Security Crime, Harvard National Security Journal, v. 3

· The Free Speech Center’s First Amendment Encyclopedia Curfews article

· Nonviolent Action Against Democratic Erosion: The United States in Comparative Perspective, from the Ash Center’s Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard

· US Protest Law Tracker from the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law

· The Right to Assemble: Responding to Protests, Spontaneous Gatherings, and Counterdemonstrations from MRSC

· How to protect your legal rights at a protest from Axios

· WA residents’ constitutional rights explained amid ICE enforcement and protests (video) from Fox 13 Seattle

· Congressional Research Services publications:

Defense Primer: Legal Authorities for the Use of Military Forces

The Posse Comitatus Act and Related Matters: The Use of the Military to Execute Civilian Law

The Posse Comitatus Act and Related Matters: A Sketch (WB)