I haven't seen anywhere if this was changed, so I assumed it was a bug.

Get an armor stand, shield, dispenser, and something to power the dispenser.
Place armor stand, place dispenser facing toward armor stand, put shield into dispenser, power dispenser and see that the shield simply flies out of the dispenser and lands a few blocks away. If the dispenser is placed in a different position, be it above, below, etc. the same result happens.

Again, I don't know if this was intentional, but when I looked up how to do it, these were the exact steps to do it, and they no longer work.

Thank you for your time,
CosmicElijah