A Cleveland special prosecutor asked a judge to bar a city resident from attending Cleveland Community Police Commission meetings while she awaits trial on charges that she disrupted a meeting in August.
Teri Wang, a former member of the commission, faces misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and disturbing a lawful meeting in Cleveland Municipal Court. Wang exceeded her public comment time, confronted the commissioners and “engaged members of the community in a turbulent manner,” according to a motion filed by the special prosecutor, former assistant county prosecutor Edward Fadel.
He went on to argue that Wang’s conduct at the August meeting “is likely to continue” and that she may “use her in-person attendance to threaten, harass, or intimidate the witnesses” who may be called to testify at her trial.
The request is the latest episode in more than a year of escalating conflict between the commission and Wang, whose clashes with the public body have sometimes disrupted its meetings. Commission members say the chaos has kept them from doing their police accountability work. Now, it puts a larger legal question before a judge: Where is the line between a resident’s right to speak, assemble and attend public meetings and a government body’s ability to conduct its work without repeated disruption?
Fadel suggested that Wang could watch and comment on the meetings on YouTube and possibly submit written comments that could be read aloud at meetings.
Wang’s attorney, Jason Haller, responded that barring her from public meetings would violate her “Constitution[al] rights to free speech and assembly.” He said that if Wang were to disrupt a meeting in the future, she could be arrested then.
Barring her from meetings would “effectively silence her frequently articulated issue positions that are unpopular” with the commissioners and some members of the public, Haller wrote.
Government bodies may enforce reasonable rules for public comment and remove people who violate them. But First Amendment experts told Signal Cleveland that barring someone from an otherwise public meeting based on what she might do is a far more extreme step.
‘A very extreme remedy’
Commissioners say that Wang’s disruptions go back more than a year. In May, the commission’s executive director, Shalenah Williams, described Wang’s “pattern of escalating disruptions” as “workplace violence” and “intimidation” in an email to city officials. Williams said that Wang’s behavior had caused commissioners, staff and members of the public to feel “genuine, reasonable apprehensive fear for their physical safety.”
Neither Williams’ email nor Fadel’s motion addressed the content of Wang’s comments at meetings.
Still, a judge ordering someone not to attend public meetings “would be a very, very extreme remedy,” said Andrew Geronimo, director of the First Amendment Clinic at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law. Such an order could constitute a form of prior restraint, which refers to a government effort to prevent speech before it occurs, he said. (The Community Police Commission is part of the City of Cleveland, with members appointed by the mayor and confirmed by City Council.)
“It’s a very serious thing to ban somebody from an open meeting,” Geronimo said, “because those public forums are designed specifically to hear from people and constituents, and especially, I would say, disgruntled constituents.”
Absent evidence of threats or actual violence, he’s skeptical that a judge would order a citizen not to attend public meetings. But he added that if the prosecutor could show a pattern of disruption, the judge could take that into consideration.
‘A hard argument to make’
Even with a history of alleged disruptions, the special prosecutor faces “an uphill battle,” said Jonathan Entin, a law and political science professor at Case, even if “her track record suggests that she might [continue to] defy whatever rules of decorum the commission might have.”
“If the question is whether, because somebody has been difficult in the past, that person can be excluded, then I think that’s a hard argument to make,” Entin said. “Not because I think that’s the right way to behave, but just as a legal matter, I think it’s a hard argument to make.”
The commission and other government bodies “can enact reasonable regulations of speech in light of the purpose” of a meeting, said Jacob Schriner-Briggs, assistant professor at Cleveland State University’s College of Law. For example, they can limit speaking time. The commission currently allows three minutes for a public comment.
But even repeated violations of such regulations probably do not warrant an order to stay away from those meetings, Schriner-Briggs added.
“Prior restraints are at the core of what the First Amendment is thought to protect against,” he said. “I am skeptical of the city’s ability to say in advance that a given individual cannot attend otherwise public meetings.”
Wang’s case is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing on Oct. 8.
