The Los Angeles City Council is now facing the threat of a nine-figure lawsuit after “years of tirades” were met with a crackdown on two very specific words.
Rather than address the pressing concerns of Los Angelenos like rampant crime and homelessness, the governing body of the second-largest city in the United States endeavored to tamp down the First Amendment rights of citizens. Having previously lost a legal fight over a similar matter, the council was threatened with a $400 million lawsuit over its recent decision to ban the use of the N-word and C-word during public comments.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, “The ban comes after years of tirades by a few speakers who attack officials’ weight, sexual orientation or gender and who sometimes use racial slurs.”
Seen seated behind a mug emblazoned with the message “STAY WOKE” and an alternatively colored American flag that read “JUNETEENTH,” Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson (D) introduced the measure passed during Wednesday’s meeting with the argument that use of the word led to some residents being discouraged from attending the public forum.
It was during public comment that attorney Wayne Spindler threatened, “I’m going to file my $400 million lawsuit that I already have prepared and ready to file.”
Specifically, the lawyer who’d previously been arrested in 2016 for submission of a public comment card that referred to then-Council President Herb Wesson (D) as the N-word along with a burning cross and an image of a man hanging from a tree, made clear his intent to read explicit lyrics from the late rapper Tupac Shakur until the council forcibly removed him and banned him from future appearances.
The city paid a black man $215,000 in 2014 after he’d been removed from a meeting after showing up in a Ku Klux Klan hood and a T-shirt that had the N-word on it.
In supporting the measure and opposing the offending terms, Harris-Dawson told the Times in March, “It is language that, anywhere outside the building where there aren’t four armed guards, would get you hurt if you said those things in public.”
Additional opposition was presented via a letter to the council in April from First Amendment Coalition Legal Director David Loy, who pointed out, “the First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring speech because it disapproves of that speech.”
“Even assuming that the terms at issue could be deemed ‘fighting words’ that justify a prior restraint in all cases, the proposed rule would remain unconstitutional because it prohibits only terms based on race or gender, not other topics or characteristics,” he contended in imploring the council to reject the rule.
Cutting to the point, Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council member Stacey Segarra-Bohlinger said during a city council meeting in July, “You’re so weak you have to curb freedom of speech for everyone, and you know this is going to bring lawsuits.”
“This is an attack on free speech,” she added.
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Author: Kevin Haggerty
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