For the last decade, the Los Angeles City Council chamber has been center stage for some of the meanest, most offensive messages delivered in an open government forum.
A few speakers routinely hurl racial slurs, antisemitic phrases or other forms of verbal abuse at council members. They have attacked officials’ looks, their weight, their clothes, their sexual orientation and their gender, curdling the proceedings on a regular basis.
On Friday, seven council members took a first step toward pushing back on such language, signing a proposal to prohibit just two of the words.
Under their proposal, initiated by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, audience members could be removed from meetings — or banned from attending future ones — for repeatedly uttering the racial slur known as the N-word or the sexist vulgarity known as the C-word.
Harris-Dawson, who is Black, said the frequent use of those words during public comment has put a chill on civic participation, discouraging people from coming to the council’s meetings, which take place three times a week. At times, the use of racist words has led to disruptions between audience members, he said.
Harris-Dawson said his colleagues may add more prohibited words to the proposal as it is debated over the coming weeks. But he said those two words in particular “have no political value” — and are meant only to insult a person’s immutable characteristics.
“It is language that, anywhere outside this building where there aren’t four armed guards, would get you hurt if you said these things in public,” he said in an interview.
The city has tried, at times, to put a stop to offensive behavior, only to lose in court. In 2014, for example, the city paid $215,000 to settle a free-speech lawsuit filed by a Black man who was ejected from a public meeting for wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood and a T-shirt featuring the N-word.
Courts have been unwilling to allow local governments to restrict constitutionally protected speech during their meetings, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and a constitutional law expert. The two words in the council proposal, while deeply offensive, are protected by the 1st Amendment, he said.
“That said, a court might very well be willing to uphold a very narrow ban on these offensive words,” Chemerinsky said in an email.
Other experts were more dubious. Eugene Volokh, professor of law emeritus at UCLA School of Law, voiced doubts that the proposal would survive a constitutional challenge. LMU Loyola Law School professor Aaron H. Caplan, who specializes in the 1st Amendment, reached a similar conclusion.
“I can feel some sympathy for the City Council,” Caplan said. “But I feel like it would be pretty easy for a court to say, ‘You cannot just have a list of a couple of prohibited words when there’s lots and lots of other words that are just as offensive.’ Then it becomes discrimination against certain viewpoints.”
Since becoming council president, Harris-Dawson has made clear that he intends to rein in what he described as bad behavior at meetings. In December, he told an audience at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum that such efforts would help move the city out of its “Gotham city phase” — a reference to the lawless metropolis in the Batman comics and movies.
Harris-Dawson’s proposal would allow the council to issue a warning the first time an offending word is used at a council or committee meeting. If an audience member keeps saying the word, they could be removed from that meeting and possibly subsequent meetings, depending on the number of offenses.
Over the last decade, only a few people have regularly used hate speech during public meetings. The most consistent offender is Armando Herman, who is barred from coming within 100 yards of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, where the county Board of Supervisors meets each week.
A judge issued that order, which lasts until 2026, after four female supervisors said they received emails from Herman expressing interest in engaging in a sexual act. Herman denied sending the emails.
Herman is known for spouting hateful words not just in the council’s ornate chamber but at smaller committee meetings. On Tuesday, he used them in a tiny conference room at a meeting of the Executive Employee Relations Committee, which oversees labor negotiations and is made up of Mayor Karen Bass, Harris-Dawson and three other council members.
Seated across the table from Bass, who is Black, Herman used the N-word while criticizing spending on homelessness. Another speaker, while railing against Bass for being in Ghana when the Palisades fire erupted, pulled out an oversized dildo and used a vulgar word for the female anatomy.
Herman responded to Harris-Dawson’s proposal, first reported by the Westside Current, by delivering a fusillade of anti-Black phrases, including multiple N-words, during his remarks to the council.
“Now that’s protected speech,” he said, before chanting President Trump’s name several times.
Attorney Wayne Spindler, another frequent public commenter, called the proposal illegal.
“You tell me what to say, and I’ll say it,” he shouted at council members. “You tell me how to say it, and what to f— say. You tell me how to dress. You tell me how to walk. You tell me what language to listen to.”
Police arrested Spindler in 2016 after he turned in a public comment card featuring a drawing of a Klansman holding a noose, a man hanging from a tree and the N-word to describe then-City Council President Herb Wesson, who is Black.
Wesson obtained a restraining order against Spindler that same year, but the L.A. County district attorney’s office declined to file charges, citing free speech concerns.
The city’s elected officials have won restraining orders against other public speakers. In 2023, a judge issued an order requiring that Donald Harlan, who often spoke at meetings, stay at least 100 yards away from Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, his home, his office and his car.
That case stemmed from a meeting where Blumenfield, who is Jewish, ordered Harlan removed for yelling from the audience. After being told to leave, Harlan screamed: “Bob, you’re f— dead, you f— Jew! I’m going to f— kill all your f— Jewish f— people!”
Council members have received a number of complaints about racist language in recent weeks. Jorge Nuño, who was appointed to the city’s new Charter Reform Commission, sent a letter to the council saying he and his family had to listen to profanity and anti-Black slurs while in the room for his confirmation hearing.
“I felt bad for my parents,” Nuño told The Times. “Because it was their first time at City Hall, and they’re hearing all this stuff. It was pretty disturbing.”
Nuño later resigned from the post for unrelated reasons.
Rob Quan, an organizer with the group Unrig LA, said he understands how upsetting the language at council meetings can be. But he argued that the public has been discouraged from attending meetings not just because of hate speech, but because of other actions taken by Harris-Dawson that reduce opportunities to speak.
Harris-Dawson recently ended phone-in public comment, forcing residents to drive downtown to address their elected officials during meetings. The council president regularly puts a time limit on the amount of public comment permitted, Quan said.
Quan predicted the city would spend a lot of time and money defending Harris-Dawson’s measure in court — even as the tiny contingent of foul-mouthed commenters finds new and more creative ways to torment the council.
Harris-Dawson said he conferred with free speech experts before drafting his measure. For now, he is declining to say what other words might be added to the proposal.
“Attacking someone’s personhood is not political speech. It’s just an attack, that’s all it is,” he said. “We’re going to try to get in all the terms.”
