Recording
ORC 2933.52 — one party consent, and what is still unsettled
Ohio is a one party consent state. If you are part of the conversation, you can record it, and you do not have to tell anyone. Announcing it is a choice about how the encounter goes, not a legal requirement.
Who handles this in Ohio: legal aid programs, lawyer referral and the state offices, listed in the Ohio directory.
- Being a party to the conversation is what makes it lawful. Recording a conversation you are not part of is the thing the statute is actually aimed at.
- Video with no audio, taken in public, carries no consent question at all.
- One party consent is Ohio's rule. Other states require every party to agree, and a call that crosses a state line can reach both.
- A recording made for the purpose of committing a criminal or tortious act falls outside the exception, whoever was party to it.
The right to record police is not as settled as the internet says it is. Several federal appeals courts have held that openly recording police performing public duties is protected by the First Amendment. Ohio sits in the Sixth Circuit, and a holding from another circuit is persuasive here rather than binding. That distinction is not academic: whether a right is clearly established in this circuit is what decides qualified immunity in a lawsuit afterwards. This site is not going to tell you it is settled when the question of which precedent binds an Ohio officer is exactly what is argued.
What is not in doubt is the narrower point: recording, by itself, is not a crime in Ohio, and speech that annoys or criticizes an officer is protected. What gets charged in these cases is almost never the camera. It is obstruction, or disorderly conduct, or trespass, and those turn on conduct rather than on the recording.
“I am recording this for my own safety and records.”
Where you are standing decides more than the camera does. A public sidewalk, a government lobby, a courtroom, and private property are four different analyzes.
Sources for this section (10)
- ORC 2933.52 — Interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications
- ORC 2933.51 — Wiretapping and electronic surveillance definitions
- Glik v. Cunniffe (1st Cir.), 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011) — Openly recording police performing their duties in public is protected by the First Amendment
- Fields v. City of Philadelphia (3d Cir.), 862 F.3d 353 (3d Cir. 2017) — The First Amendment protects recording police activity in public
- U.S. Const. amend. I — Freedom of speech and of the press
- City of Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451 (1987) — Speech that annoys or challenges police is protected, and cannot be criminalized for that alone
- ORC 2921.31 — Obstructing official business
- ORC 2911.21 — Criminal trespass
- Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators' Assn., 460 U.S. 37 (1983) — Government property is sorted into public, designated, and nonpublic forums
- Sup.R. 12 — Broadcasting and recording court proceedings
Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Applying it to a particular situation is the work of a licensed Ohio attorney.