For the past decade, the Los Angeles City Council’s Chamber of Commerce has been the central stage for some of the sleazy and most offensive messages delivered on the Open Government Forum.
Several speakers routinely cast racial slander, anti-Semitic phrases, or other forms of linguistic abuse of council members. They attack officials’ appearance, weight, clothing, sexual orientation and gender, and regularly litigates.
On Friday, seven councillors took the first step to push back such language and signed a proposal to ban two words.
Under their proposal, launched by Council President Marquez Harris Dawson, the audience could be removed from the meeting or banned from attending future meetings.
Black Harris Dawson said that frequent use of those words during public comments made it cold to civic participation and discouraged people from coming to council meetings three times a week. Sometimes using racist language led to confusion among the audience, he said.
Harris Dawson said his colleagues may add more banned words to the proposal as they are being discussed in the coming weeks. However, he specifically said these two words “has no political value.” And it only means shaming a person’s unchanging traits.
“It’s language that hurts when you say these things publicly anywhere outside this building where there are no four armed guards,” he said in an interview.
The city has tried to stop offensive behavior at times, but only loses in court. In 2014, for example, the city paid $215,000 to settle a free speech lawsuit filed by a black man who was kicked out of a public meeting for wearing a t-shirt featuring Ku Klux Klan Hood and the N-word.
Irwin Kemensky, California’s dean of law and constitutional expert, said the court did not want to allow local governments to restrict constitutionally protected speeches. He said the two words in the Council’s proposal, although deeply offensive, are protected by the First Amendment.
“That being said, the courts may be willing to support a very narrow ban on these offensive language,” Chemerinsky said in an email.
Other experts were more suspicious. Eugene Woloff, a law professor at UCLA Law School, raised questions about the proposal enduring constitutional challenges. Aaron H. Caplan, professor at LMU Loyola Law School, who specializes in the first revision, has come to a similar conclusion.
“You can feel sympathy for the city council,” Kaplan said. “But I think it’s very easy for a court to say, ‘When there are a lot of offensive words, you can’t just have a list of a few prohibited words.” Then there is discrimination against a particular perspective. ”
Since becoming the council president, Harris Dawson has made it clear that he intends to restrain what he described as bad behavior at the meeting. In December, he told the audience at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum that such an effort would help move cities out of the Gotham City Phase, a reference to the lawless metropolitan city of Batman comics and films.
Harris-Dawson’s proposal allows councils to issue warnings when they first use the issue at a council or committee meeting. If the audience continues to say the words, depending on the number of crimes, it may be removed from that meeting or subsequent meetings.
In the past decade, only a few have used hate speech regularly during public meetings. The most consistent offender is Armand Herman, who is forbidden to come within 100 yards of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Fame, which the county board of supervisors meets every week.
The judge issued the order. This continues until 2026 after four female supervisors said they received an email from Herman, who has expressed interest in engaging in sexual activity. Herman refused to send an email.
Herman is known for not only glamorous rooms of the council, but also for vomiting hateful words at small committee meetings. On Tuesday, he oversaw labor negotiations and used them in a small meeting room at a meeting of the Executive Exercise Relations Committee, which consists of Mayor Karen Bass, Mayor Harris Dawson and three other council members.
Sitting across the table from a black bus, Herman used the N-word while criticizing spending against the homeless. Another speaker pulled out an oversized dildo and used vulgar language for the woman’s anatomy, railing on the base to be in Ghana when the Palisade erupted.
Herman responded to Harris Dawson’s proposal, first reported by Westside Current, by delivering Fujirado, an anti-black phrase that includes multiple n-words, during his remarks to the Council.
“Now, it’s a protected speech,” he said before reciting President Trump’s name several times.
Another frequent public commentator, Attorney Wayne Spindler, called the proposal illegal.
“You will tell me what to say and I will say it,” he cried out to the council members. “You will tell me how to say it and what to say. Say. You will teach me how to dress. You will tell me how to walk.
Police arrested Spindler in 2016, he took in a picture of a Clanman holding a rope, a man hanging from a tree, and a public comment card depicting the n-word to describe the black President Herb Wesson.
Wesson obtained a restraining order against Spindler in the same year, but the LA County District Attorney’s Office refused to file charges, citing concerns about freedom of speech.
City elected officials have obtained restraint orders against other public speakers. In 2023, the judge issued an order requiring Donald Harlan, who spoke often at meetings, to stay at least 100 yards from Councillor Bob Blumenfield, his home, his office and car.
The incident comes from a meeting in which Blumenfield, a Jew, cried out from the audience to order Harlan to be removed. Harlan cried after being told to leave.
Council members have received numerous complaints about racist language in recent weeks. Jorge Nuno, appointed to the city’s new Charter Reform Committee, sent a letter to the council saying he and his family must listen to blasphemous and anti-black slurs while they were in the room for confirmation hearings.
“My parents were feeling sick,” Nuno told The Times. “It’s because it’s the first time at City Hall and they’re hearing all of this. That was pretty disturbing.”
Nuno later resigned from posting for unrelated reasons.
Rob Quan, organizer of group Unrig La, said he understands how upset the language is at the council meeting. However, he argued that the public was discouraged from attending meetings due to hate speech as well as other actions taken by Harris Dawson that reduced the chances of speaking.
Harris Dawson recently ended his phone public comment and forced residents to drive downtown to deal with elected officials during the meeting. Council presidents regularly set limits on the amount of public comments allowed, Quan said.
Quan predicted that even if the small conditions of foul mouth commenters find new, more creative ways to torment the council, the city would spend a lot of time and money defending Harris Dawson’s action in court.
Harris Dawson said he consulted with free speech experts before drafting his measure. For now, he refuses to say that other words could be added to the proposal.
“Attacking someone’s personality is not a political speech. It’s just an attack. That’s all,” he said. “We try to get on all terms.”
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