Cleveland City Council Considering Limiting Public Comment to Topics Currently Under Consideration by the Body

Cleveland City Hall – $25 Your attempt to get a construction permit takes longer than expected as the application must be made in-person, between the hours of 2 to 3:17 p.m. on a first or third Tuesday of the month, and completed in calligraphy. Lose a turn as a penalty. Credit: Scene Archives

In a caucus meeting Monday, Cleveland City Council shared a draft for discussion of potential changes to its current procedures for public comment at council meetings. The biggest change proposed would limit speakers to talking about “one item currently under consideration by Council,” meaning legislation that has been introduced in or is pending before Council, or a matter currently being discussed in Council.

Currently, speakers can only address the topic they registered to speak about, but that topic isn’t restricted to items currently under consideration. The proposed change comes after Council has clashed with speakers in recent weeks.

The new rule would severely limit those who could participate to people familiar with Council’s agendas and would prohibit the use of public comment to raise issues that Council should, but hasn’t yet, addressed.

In Council’s September 25 meeting, two speakers had the microphone cut while they were speaking. Attorney and activist Chris Martin was cut off while reading the names of council members who received donations from the Council Leadership Fund and another speaker’s time was cut short after homophobic and antisemitic remarks.

Lawyers working for Martin brought their concerns about First Amendment violations to city lawyers, who agreed that the letter of the policy wouldn’t be followed for the time being.

But the draft of proposed changes explicitly details the presiding officer’s, “authority to terminate the remarks of any individual who does not adhere,” to the procedures.

The changes proposed in the draft would also eliminate some rules. Under current rules, speakers are prohibited from wearing anything that “promotes any candidate, campaign, issue product or service,” electioneering for a specific candidate or ballot issue, endorsing or promoting a product or service and addressing individuals (council members or others) and using “indecent or discriminatory,” language.

The draft of procedures seems to nix these stipulations which, in a letter to lawyers representing Council and the city detailing potential First Amendment violations in the public comment procedures, the Case Western Reserve University School of Law First Amendment Clinic argued are “impermissibly discriminate against certain viewpoints.”

The proposed procedures would still prohibit certain language but, instead of banning “indecent or discriminatory,” language, the rules would ban, “obscene or threatening” language and “frivolous, repetitive or harassing” comments.

“I was disappointed to see that Council’s new proposal doesn’t seem to incorporate much, if any, of the feedback that we gave them on behalf of our client,” Andrew Geronimo, director of First Amendment Clinic at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, told Scene. “There was a lot of talk in the room about respect, and that’s sort of the one of the aspects that we’ve been trying to tell Council is you can’t just regulate speech based on the viewpoint of whether it’s respectful or not.”

On October 30, council President Blaine Griffin had many protestors in support of Palestine who were calling for a ceasefire removed for refusing to stop chanting during the council meeting. Current rules mandate that members of the public must conduct themselves “appropriately,” and the proposed rules require attendees conduct themselves “with reasonable decorum,” but both call for the removal of those in violation.

Protestors carrying signs, as many did at the October meeting, also violate both sets of rules as “signs, posters, banners, placards and similar items are strictly prohibited” in the chamber.

Other concerns raised by the First Amendment Clinic would not be addressed by the procedures proposed in the draft.

The clinic wrote that banning signs takes away additional speech opportunities for attendees other than the 10 people permitted to speak, especially those who may not be able to stand at the podium or make their voices heard.

The letter also cautioned that Council “must ensure that its presiding officer understands that discretion to maintain order does not include authority to engage in viewpoint discrimination or arbitrarily enforce otherwise constitutional rules.”

In the caucus meeting, a lawyer representing Council defended the procedures, saying meetings are limited public forums, not true public forums. While true public forums like sidewalks or public parks are more open, limited public forums are reserved for certain groups or topics.

Discussion of the proposed restrictions comes less than a week after Issue 38 narrowly failed on the ballot. A statement from Council the next day said, “We recognize the need to engage the public and will continue improving how and when we do it as we move forward as a body…Issue 38 revealed we need to do more work on civic engagement, participation, and awareness.”

“The First Amendment prohibits government actors from regulating speech based on the viewpoint used,” Geronimo noted. “So, basically what we are saying is, under the current existing rules, if they have a prohibition against abusive language towards members of Council, that’s sort of the kind of speech that the First Amendment envisions people are able to say to their government officials, that they should be able to talk to them about — what they think they’re doing wrong — even if that speech becomes sort of harsh, or uncouth or something like that. So you can’t ban criticism of yourself as a government official and allow praise.”

In order to change the procedures for public comment in meetings, a vote will need to pass in Council.

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