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LOS ANGELES — A woman who was ejected from a Los Angeles City Council meeting for speaking one of two words banned by a new council policy has filed a federal lawsuit against the city, arguing that her First Amendment right to free speech was abridged.
Responding to citizen complaints, the council passed a ban saying the n-word (a racial slur against black people) and the c-word (a slur against women) last year in an effort to establish more decorum during public-comment periods. Plaintiff Stacey Segarra-Bohlinger persisted in using the c-word in commenting on the new policy, leading to her ejection and an order barring her from attending a number of future council meetings.
Segarra-Bohlinger stayed within her allotted time to address the council, focused on an issue within the council’s scope of responsibility and yielded the floor when her time ran out, according to the lawsuit.
Attorneys from the Northern California-based First Amendment Coalition and the Washington-based Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE) are representing Segarra-Bohlinger in the litigation.
The complaint, which was filed in the Central District of California on Oct. 6, alleges that the plaintiff’s ouster and the meeting ban are unconstitutional under the First and 14th Amendments and also violate the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open meetings law.
Case law holds that in order for a government body to silence or remove a speaker during a public meeting, the speaker must engage in a physical disruption of the meeting and not simply engage in speech, according to the complaint.
“... The First Amendment protects not only the ideas (the) speaker wishes to express but also the words the speaker chooses to express those ideas,” the lawsuit states. “... Allowing the government to prohibit particular words creates a ‘substantial risk of suppressing ideas in the process’ …”
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit. Attorneys representing Segarra-Bohlinger said the lawsuit was needed to prevent the City Council from going further down a path toward censorship.
“While the council is free to condemn speech it considers offensive, the Constitution prohibits the council from silencing it,” FIRE attorney Zach Silver said in a prepared statement. “Giving government officials the power to decide which words people are allowed to use is exactly the kind of censorship the First Amendment is meant to prevent.”
Silver went on to say that city officials are planning to add more words to the two that have already been prohibited.
“When the government can police the words people use, a list of forbidden words has a way of growing,” he said. “And here, the council has already told us it won’t stop at these two words. We’re taking the council to court to put an end to the list before the council adds another word to it.”
The lawsuit asks the federal court to issue a preliminary injunction and permanent injunction to bar city officials from enforcing the word restrictions and the barring of individuals from attending future public meetings. Segarra-Bohlinger’s attorneys are also seeking nominal damages for the plaintiff as well as attorney fees and court costs.
