A website owner and journalist is suing Bossier City officials for violations of the First Amendment, Louisiana Constitution and the state’s open-meeting law, arguing that recent City Council rules and actions quash free speech by those with disfavored viewpoints.
Weston Merriott, the founder of Sobo.live, filed the federal lawsuit Oct. 9 in the Western District of Louisiana. Several council members and the city attorney, Charles Jacobs, are named as defendants in the complaint.
City officials began pushing back at comments Merriott made during City Council meetings in February, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiff urged council members to respect the wishes of city residents who were petitioning for the implementation of a term limit measure for council members.
“Over the course of the next two weeks, plaintiff Merriott became increasingly concerned that (the) Bossier City Council was not being transparent in its process and efforts to defeat the term limits petition, and that it was failing to follow the process of the (city’s) Home Rule Charter,” the lawsuit states.
Merriott also criticized efforts by some council members to seek outside counsel to review the term limits petition and delay consideration of the measure.
At a subsequent council meeting, the city clerk offered a new warning about the need for decorum at such meetings.
“Any person making personal, impertinent or slanderous remarks or who shall become boisterous while addressing the council shall be forthwith, by the president pro-tem, barred from further audience before the council, unless permission to continue be granted by a majority vote of the council,” the lawsuit reports the clerk as saying.
And at a council meeting in September, the council said in its minutes that Merriott became disruptive in his remarks to city officials – something Merriott disagrees with, according to the complaint.
He is being represented by attorneys from the Tulane First Amendment Law Clinic in New Orleans, whose director is Katie Schwartzmann.
“Public meetings are where our elected leaders make policy decisions and engage with citizens,” Schwartzmann said in a statement released by Sobo.live. “The right to freely comment on policy and ask questions of elected leaders at those meetings is crucial to our system of self-governance.”
Bossier officials are unconstitutionally limiting public comments on political matters, she said.
The lawsuit also presents documentation that city elected officials were drawing up a resolution designed to eliminate public comments after each council agenda item during its public meetings.
“The proposed resolution would also silence the public, inhibiting individuals from commenting on individual agenda items that affect their daily lives,” the lawsuit says. “The proposed resolution closes a forum that previously was open to the public, because of disagreement with the content and viewpoints expressed, and in retaliation for political speech.”
In addition, the plaintiff accuses defendants of putting in place a gag order barring City Council members and city employees from speaking to the public or media about the proposed resolution that Merriott says was discussed during a secret council meeting.
The lawsuit seeks to stop the defendants from using its rules to curtail free speech rights at council meetings and enjoin the defendants from enforcing its “gag order.” Merriott is also asking that city officials get training in free-speech rights and for the court to award nominal and compensatory damages against the defendants, as well as attorney fees and costs.
The city attorney did not respond to a request for comment.