While we are a hyper-local newspaper, there are often news items in Arizona or the nation that pique our interest with regard to democracy, the rule of law, journalism or the Constitution and warrant a public discussion in our newspapers.
Skip Hall, the mayor of the city of Surprise, a suburb in the northwest corner of the Phoenix Valley, had 32-year-old Surprise resident Rebekah Massie arrested during an Aug. 20 Surprise City Council meeting’s call to the public.
Massie was at the meeting to criticize a 4.4% pay raise for Surprise City Attorney Robert Wingo, alleging he had violated state law and the Arizona State Bar’s standards by failing to respond to election issues raised about the town clerk during the recent primary election.
She spoke during the call to the public, which Verde Valley residents know is the portion of municipal and county meetings during which residents can speak on any topic they deem of public interest that is not on that meeting’s agenda. Residents speak at nearly every meeting in the Verde Valley, in hopes that their concerns may make it onto a future agenda, or just to voice their opinions to their elected leaders.
Hall repeatedly interrupted Massie while she was speaking, claiming she was violating a new council policy that banned complaints about or criticisms of city employees.
In August, we wrote in an editorial that this new rule “is an open and naked violation of citizens’ First Amendment freedom of speech and First Amendment right to criticize public officials: ‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.’”
We also wrote that “No slip of municipal paper trumps the U.S. Constitution. Government can narrowly regulate time, place and manner — e.g., a three-minute public comment at a meeting — but not the content — of public speech.”
Hall’s silencing of Massie and her arrest is the kind of government censorship the Founders feared, which is why they wrote the First Amendment into law immediately after the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The Bill of Rights is the conditio sine que non for the Constitution — passage of free speech protections as the First Amendment was actually a prerequisite for the Anti-Federalists’s support of ratification in their home states.
Following Massie’s arrest, the Philadelphia-based free speech and civil rights organization Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression tweeted: “City of Surprise: We’ll see you in court” and took up Massie’s case to defend her right — and all of ours — to criticize the government without fear of censorship, harassment or arrest for her speech.
Having read our editorial, FIRE’s Media Relations Specialist Jack Whitten contacted us last week with an update.
In a court ruling issued Oct. 23, Maricopa County Justice of the Peace Gerald A. Williams slammed the city of Surprise and the prosecution for infringing on Massie’s rights — and threw out the case. Williams wrote that “no branch of any federal, state or local government in this country should ever attempt to control the content of political speech,” then quoted from the 1991 U.S. Supreme Court case Burson v. Freeman: “Whatever differences may exist about interpretations of the First Amendment, there is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of that Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs.”
The judge further wrote that “the defendant [Massie] should not have faced criminal prosecution once for expressing her political views. The court agrees that she should never face criminal prosecution for expressing her political views on that date at that time, again. Nor should she be forced to encounter additional attorney fees should this matter be re-filed, as she would not likely be entitled to a court-appointed attorney.”
The judge’s resounding rebuke reinforces the primacy of the First Amendment in our political discourse. Fortunately for Surprise, Hall is out of office in November.
We journalists wouldn’t be able to do our work informing readers about the importance of free speech and our other rights if it wasn’t for FIRE and other civil rights organizations that put legal teeth into defending our civil liberties.
We journalists can talk about our constitutional liberties in the public sphere, but it’s FIRE and other civil rights lawyers and their advocacy who defend them in the courts to give our otherwise hollow words the weight they deserve.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
