Filtering out negative frequencies
I'm not sure if you ask about symmetry of the impulse response or symmetry of the frequency response. All filters with a real impulse response have conjugate symmetric frequency responses and symmetrical magnitude frequency responses. A symmetrical magnitude frequency response would affect the magnitudes of both frequencies $\omega$ and $-\omega$ identically so it could not possibly remove or attenuate a negative frequency while keeping the positive frequency intact. So the impulse response has to be complex.

The discrete impulse response $b_k$ of an ideal do-nothing filter is:

$$b_k = \frac{\int_{-\pi}^{\pi}e^{i\omega k}d\omega}{2\pi} = \left\{\begin{array}{ll}1 &amp;\text{ if }k = 0\\\frac{\sin(\pi k)}{\pi k}&amp;\text{ if } k \ne 0\end{array}\right.\\ = [\dots, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, \dots]$$

The middle value $1$ is at $b_0$. Changing where the integral starts gives the ideal negative frequency removal filter:

$$b_k = \frac{\int_{0}^{\pi}e^{i\omega k}d\omega}{2\pi} = \left\{\begin{array}{ll}1/2&amp;\text{ if } k = 0\\\frac{\sin(\pi k)}{2 \pi k} + i\left(\frac{1 - \cos(\pi k)}{2\pi k}\right)&amp;\text{ if }k \ne 0\end{array}\right.= [\dots, 0, -\frac{i}{5\pi}, 0, -\frac{i}{3\pi}, 0, -\frac{i}{\pi}, \frac{1}{2}, \frac{i}{\pi}, 0, \frac{i}{3\pi}, 0, \frac{i}{5\pi}, 0, \dots]$$

The middle value $1/2$ is at $b_0$. The real part of the impulse response is zero at other values of $k$. The imaginary part has odd symmetry with respect to $\operatorname{Im}(b_0) = 0$. It is plain to see from the integral that the frequency response is zero for frequency $\omega &lt; 0$ and constant ($1$) for $\omega &gt; 0$.