"Marqueece Harris-Dawson Picks First Amendment Fight He Has Zero Chance of Winning" by Daniel Guss
Rookie LA City Council president doesn't pay attention during meetings, like when Deputy City Attorneys repeatedly affirm, apologetically, that invective is protected by the First Amendment.
Los Angeles City Council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson, MHD, must have been absent from school the day the teacher explained the concept of those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
Or, he was present but as absent-minded as he has been during his first few months in charge of City Council, where increasing censorship and reducing public participation are his accountability dodges for a deadly inferno; a billion-dollar budget deficit forecasting that thousands of city employees may lose their jobs; and even the Los Angeles Zoo, an arcane and costly death pit of animal cruelty, “has earned the dubious distinction of being ranked the #1 Worst Zoo for Elephants by the animal advocacy group In Defense of Animals (IDA).”
Wait for it…
For the second year in a row.
This morning, MHD is expected to drive his censorship wagon over the cliff when he introduces a motion that penalizes the use of invective by members of the public during City Council meetings.
Stunningly, he told Jon Regardie in the Westside Current, “I’m eager to get in front of a judge and show them a video of what happens in L.A. City Council and committee, and ask her or him if they think this is what is intended by the free speech that we’re granted in the First Amendment and the Brown Act.”
The judge will answer yes, that’s what the First Amendment intended.
So will every judge at each level of appeals, except that the City of Los Angeles government is flat broke and can’t afford the litigation, let alone its likely consequences.
So MHD:
✔ recognizes that his motion invites a costly, slam-dunk First Amendment lawsuit.
✔ cannot undo admitting to Regardie that he is “targeting,” even if he changes the wording of his motion.
✔ ignores previous free speech lawsuits this very City Council consistently lost:
“That included paying $215,000 to settle a free-speech lawsuit filed by a man who was kicked out of a meeting of the Recreation and Parks Board of Commissioners for wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood (the man, by the way, was Black), and whose attorney argued that his First Amendment rights were violated. In another case, two men who were ejected from council meetings for their language and behavior each won $1—but the city had to pony up $600,000 to cover their legal fees.”
Jon Regardie, Westside Current, March 20, 2025
MHD should ask the City Attorney’s office to explain Sullivan, in which SCOTUS Justice William Brennan — a liberal who promoted the expansion of individual rights — wrote about a “…profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
The Supremes voted 9-0 in favor of the government critics.
MHD should then watch the countless times that every Deputy City Attorney who officiates at City Council meetings has repeatedly and apologetically affirmed the constitutionality of caustic language, as recently as their last meeting on Wednesday.
Below is a closed-caption screenshot from that meeting.
It is from the video clip that follows it, in which Deputy City Attorney Jonathan Groat says, after a few minutes of tormenting-but-substantively-accurate comments from Wayne Spindler, an attorney who is clearly the #1 target of MHD’s anticipated motion, “we (do) have to allow them to speak (during their public comment period).”
Roll the NSFW video to the 1:08:50 mark IF the video starts at 0:00:00.
MHD has also failed to recognize that Brennan’s ruling protects gadflies like Mike Greenspan when he punctuates his colorful criticisms of the Mayor and City Council with sex toys that, constitutionally speaking, are akin to a lapel pin or tee-shirt affirming support for Ukraine, breast cancer awareness and pet spay/neuter programs.
By not thinking things through, and ignoring my offer to discuss how to improve public participation (while potentially taking the edge off of the hostilities), MHD now finds himself in a lose-lose situation.
If he pursues the motion, he is guaranteed to lose in court if it gets the city sued, which will enrich and embolden the critics, their attorneys and many others.
If he shelves the motion, now that he has promoted it, it will immediately get worse, because it acknowledges that he overplayed his hand, and that the antagonism really gets under his skin.
And there is nothing that the gadflies enjoy more than that.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards in June ‘23. In June ‘24, he won its “Best Commentary, Non-Political” award. He has contributed to the Daily Mail, CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)