"You cannot come up here and say negative things about people," West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio kept insisting during last week's city commission meeting. The focus of her ire was a former West Palm Beach police officer turned gadfly who was using the public comment time to blast past and current city officials. Ms. Muoio eventually shut off his microphone, saying that he had violated the commission's civility code for public meetings.
The former officer - William McCray, a goading, litigious haranguer with a checkered past - cried unconstitutional censorship. He's probably right. The city's civility code, which bars citizens who speak at commission meetings from aiming their comments at individual commissioners or others, crosses the hazy line separating reasonable speaking guidelines from unconstitutionally broad limits on speech content. The city's selective enforcement of its code only strengthens the claims that West Palm Beach is engaging in unconstitutional censorship.
The First Amendment gives no guarantee that a citizen can say whatever she wishes at a government meeting. But courts have ruled that the Constitution's free speech protections bar governments from uneven or content-based prohibitions. Imposing uniform time limits and barring physical threats and profanity at a public meeting are legal. Telling citizens that they may speak only if they don't target specific commissioners, employees or citizens is probably not - and shouldn't be.
Mayor Muoio was hoping to undermine Mr. McCray when she shut off his microphone, but she undermined the city's own rules. By silencing instead of ignoring him, she made Mr. McCray into a headline and may have provided grounds for legal challenges. Making the city's case even shakier is the fact that city officials apply their policy inconsistently. Speakers like Mr. McCray who criticize individuals are told that they are violating the civility code, while speakers who praise or thank individual commissioners are allowed to continue.
Many other local governments, including Palm Beach County, Lake Worth and Riviera Beach, have civility rules that prohibit profane and aggressive behavior at public meetings. The Florida League of Cities has gone as far as to encourage its members statewide to adopt them. There is nothing wrong with setting minimal standards for civilized discourse, but West Palm Beach has gone far beyond that with its limits on whom citizens can address and whom they can speak about. Commissioners and Mayor Muoio should revise this problematic policy before it becomes the subject of a costly lawsuit and the source of further censorship.
- Andrew Marra,
for The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board
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