I think you meant "the fifth circuit is a federal appeals court." Circuit court is synonymous with federal appeals court. That doesn't automatically mean a rul

I think you meant "the fifth circuit is a federal appeals court." Circuit court is synonymous with federal appeals court. That doesn't automatically mean a ruling applies nationally. A judge has to specify it. Note that in the Seattle travel ban case, the district court's ruling said that the defendants (the US government) must not enforce the order. Naturally that applies nationally, since he didn't specify a state. Since the party being sued here is not the US government, the extent of the ruling is less clear to me. I too am not a lawyer, but I think this kind of applies nationally. It's not an injunction or TRO like in the Seattle case, where a straight-up order was issued: stop now, you are forbidden to do this. In this case they're saying "in future court cases, the law should be interpreted this way." So they've provided a precedent for other courts when other police are sued on the same grounds. This won't stop police across the nation immediately the way the TRO stopped the travel ban immediately, but over time I imagine it will become less common to try to stop people from recording the police, as it becomes progressively more common knowledge that you're not going to win that if it goes to court.