The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit against six unnamed people, alleging that they were harassing voters at suburban Detroit polling places by “recording voters inside polling places,” following a woman into her car as she was leaving a polling place, and “making comments suggesting that violence would befall a voter’s child” if Kamala Harris won the election.

Police were called to several of the polling locations in question but did not arrest the people filming, according to affidavits mentioned in the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

In one case, police told a woman who complained that “the group of people had not done anything illegal and that the police could not do anything ‘because it was free speech in a public place,’” according to court documents. although Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel had given police departments guidance to the contrary.

The ACLU asked the court to declare that intimidating voters – “including filming voters entering and exiting the polls” and remaining at polling station entry and exit points – is illegal.

In response, U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Berg on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order against the unnamed defendants, ordering them to “cease harassment or intimidation of voters inside or outside the polls during the elections.” November 2024 elections.”

An affidavit from a poll watcher named Steven Raimi who was not included in the complaint but was mentioned in Berg’s order said he saw three men with cameras filming people entering and leaving a polling place at Derby High School. in Birmingham. One wore a baseball cap that said “Don’t bother me, I’m a (expletive). “My rights don’t end where your feelings begin.”

Raimi told them they were not allowed to film people entering or leaving the polling place, according to the affidavit. Attorney General Dana Nessel had said as much in an October letter to police departments across the state. The men responded that it was their First Amendment right.

People handing out leaflets nearby told Raimi that the men had stopped a family from leaving the polling place, “despite the family asking them not to record them,” according to court documents.

He later saw one of the same men and four other people at a polling place at the Oakland Schools Technical Campus in southeast Royal Oak, where they continued filming even though the district supervisor told them he was not permitted, Raimi said, according to the court. documents.

A voter said in a separate affidavit that one of the men, who was wearing a mask, stood four or five feet away from his footage as he attempted to vote and refused to move away when asked.

A third affidavit said that at a polling place at the First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, a group of five men and one woman crowded at the entrance so that voters had to “almost walk past” and used stick phones to selfies to film the interior.

In issuing the order, Bern wrote that without it, “plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm by being deprived of their constitutional voting rights for the November 5, 2024 general election.”