‘Laws don’t change unless they’re challenged’: Palm Beach County may try to curb hate speech

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Presidential election denial. COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Palm Beach County Commissioners perhaps have heard and seen it all.

Still, commissioners’ attention turned to what could be done to curb hate speech on April 2, after a group of people at a meeting spoke one by one at a lectern — making disparaging remarks about Jewish people, and two of them invoking Adolf Hitler.

“It was shocking but unfortunately I guess not surprising that people would come out from underneath their rocks and spread their hate,” Commissioner Gregg Weiss said during a meeting on Tuesday.

Weiss said that even though what was said on April 2 did not violate the First Amendment, it did not mean it was not “disgusting.”

“Hate speech is protected under the First Amendment,” County Attorney Denise Coffman said during the Tuesday meeting. “But I think sometimes the board has a decision to make in their heart and their conscience, and sometimes we make stands because that’s the right thing to do.”

Current county rules state matters by the public should be “germane to county business,” but during the meeting, Coffman said the board could be allowed in the future to cut people off, midsentence, if they begin talking about something not within the scope of the board’s authority.

“We’re going to beef up the rules a little bit and focus on the fact that we only want people to talk about things that are relevant to the Board of County Commissioners,” Coffman said.

A “more robust discussion” is still needed in order to tie the idea down, she said, before rules are enacted.

“If somebody makes a comment about being unhappy with the resolution of the board, that’s clearly within the scope of the board,” she said. “But at that point, if they continue to make political statements or statements that are unrelated to the business of the board, you can cut them off if it’s unrelated to us, but we must be consistent, everyone gets treated the same.”

She added: “The conscience of the board is such that we’re willing to take a little bit more risk than is strictly conservative, which, you know, attorneys always want to be the most conservative people in the room when it comes to risk.”

“But sometimes laws don’t change unless they’re challenged.”

The county should try to clearly define its rules surrounding speech, said Howard Wasserman, a Florida International University law professor who specializes in First Amendment law, among other topics.

“They may need some precision, and they may have some trouble finding the precision, in their definition of what pertains to the business of the county,” said Wasserman, who isn’t involved in the county’s discussions. “But I think they can get past that.”

A lot of other local governments are discussing an implementation of rules similar to what Palm Beach County is doing, Wasserman said.

“The meetings have become so unruly,” he said, adding: “And so I think it’s happening more and more in the current political environment.”

Already, city officials in Delray Beach are following suit in response to what was said during the April 2 county meeting.

During a Delray Beach City Commission meeting on April 9, Deputy Vice-Mayor Rob Long proposed the city proactively amend its rules to prevent or at the least mitigate opportunities for anyone to use the city’s chambers as a “platform to broadcast hate speech.”

The goal, he said, would be to give newly elected Mayor Tom Carney tools to shut down hate speech and remove those who are saying it at City Hall. “Freedom of speech is not an unfettered right, particularly if it’s threatening, inciting or defamatory,” Long said.

Wasserman said a government has the ability to limit the scope of speech to certain topics, such as only about county business, as Palm Beach County is trying to do, as long as it’s done in a viewpoint-neutral manner.

For example, if a member of the public stepped forward and began speaking about the Israel-Hamas war, something the county is not involved in, the commissioners couldn’t allow one person to speak favorably about Israel but then prohibit another person from criticizing Israel, he said. Both people would need to be cut off for the rule to be enforced fairly.

This authority is because the space to which people can come forward and speak at the meetings is not what would be considered a wide-open public forum. Rather, it is a designated public forum, a space the government has opened up for speech by the public. The governing body behind a designated public forum is allowed to limit dialogue to certain speakers or topics, Wasserman said.

This differs from public forums such as a public sidewalk where anyone could come forward and peacefully protest.

“The county could say, for example, only county residents can speak at this public meeting,” he said. “You couldn’t do that at a park.”

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