Know Your Rights: Do You Have to Talk to Cops?

**Leah Litman** (0:00)
Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. 250 years into the American experiment, it's time for all of us to decide, what kind of a country do we want to be?
The founding fathers got a lot of things wrong, but one thing they got right was knowing that church and state need to be kept separate. Christian nationalists are trying to destroy that history and take this country down a scary path. They're misusing government power to impose their beliefs, rewrite our history and decide who belongs in America.
Americans United refuse to let that happen. Every single day, Americans United is fighting back and holding the line against Christian nationalism with everything they've got. AU has sued the Trump administration seven times in the last year alone, and 12 times since the second administration began. They've challenged government officials who use taxpayer resources to promote their religious beliefs, their exposing abuses of power, defending public schools, and holding the government accountable when it violates the Constitution. But filing lawsuits, changing policy, and community advocacy don't happen on their own. They happen because people like you decide to be part of American's United Fight. If you're looking for an empowered community to join, take a look at what's going on with AU. Visit au.org/crooked to learn more and join the fight today.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:13)
Mr. Chief Justice, please report. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:25)
She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex.
All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

**Leah Litman** (1:55)
Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. This episode is part of a summer bonus series that we are calling Know Your Rights. As I explained on the very first Know Your Rights bonus, we wanted people to be more informed about what their rights are, to help them claim the Constitution, but also to help people be safe during upcoming protests and election season. This time, the right or rights we're going to be discussing is the right not to answer questions asked by law enforcement.

**Melissa Murray** (2:24)
To help us go through this important question is my NYU colleague, Daniel Harawa. Daniel is a professor of law and the director of the Federal Appellate Clinic at NYU where his work focuses on race and the criminal legal system.
Welcome to the show, Daniel.

**Daniel Harawa** (2:41)
I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

**Leah Litman** (2:43)
Of course. So maybe we can just start with the basics. And that is if a police officer approaches me on the street, do I have to stop?

**Daniel Harawa** (2:52)
So the answer is no, right?
If the police officer approaches you, you haven't done anything wrong. You are totally free to walk away, go about your business, and hopefully the police officer will leave you alone. Now, whether or not they will, that's a different question, but yes, you can walk away.

**Melissa Murray** (3:11)
I'm sorry, wait, can I walk away? Can a melanated person walk away?

**Daniel Harawa** (3:16)
So I guess there are your rights in theory and your rights in practice, right? And so I guess one thing that's important for this entire conversation to understand is that there are your rights on paper and then that doesn't necessarily mean that's the wisest thing for you to do when encountering the police on the street. And so everything, this whole conversation should be understood in that light. And so if a police officer walks up to you and asks to talk to you, you can say, no, you can politely ask, am I free to leave? Can I walk away? And the officer should give you an answer, but the safer course is probably acknowledging them and then walking away as opposed to just ignoring them out, right?

**Melissa Murray** (3:51)
All right.
Are there any instances where a law enforcement officer could tell me stop and I could just keep walking without getting arrested? Do I have to be pretty sure that I have not done anything wrong and have witnesses around to make sure that that is exactly the case?

**Daniel Harawa** (4:06)
If you are told to stop, you should probably stop because you don't have a good sense of why they're telling you to stop, right? So you may have asked a cigarette, for example, even though you're not a smoker, and that could be littering in some states, and an officer could stop you for that reason. So you just don't know the basis for the command to stop. But once you do stop, you are seized under the Fourth Amendment, and there are a whole bunch of...