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LA council bans ‘N’-word and ‘C’-word in public meetings<\/p>\n
Los Angeles City Council banned the use of the “N”-word and “C”-word in meetings, citing SCOTUS precedent.<\/p>\n
Alley Mills Bean approached the podium at a Los Angeles city council meeting alongside Council member Traci Park on a June day in 2024 with her recently awarded Emmy in hand.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d won it the previous year<\/a> for her role as the hook-wielding serial killer Heather Webber on \u201cGeneral Hospital.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Park acknowledged both Mills Bean\u2019s \u201cincredible professional accomplishments\u201d and her \u201cselfless voluntarism and selfless duty\u201d to the Venice community. Mills Bean serves as chair<\/a> of the Venice Neighborhood Council\u2019s Homelessness and Housing Committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n The actress, known for playing Norma Arnold on \u201cThe Wonder Years,\u201d told USA TODAY the recognition was a “huge honor.\u201d<\/p>\n But what she equally remembered were the others being recognized that day \u2212<\/strong> including an area high school academic decathlon team \u2212 <\/strong>and how the offensive language used by some at the meeting could taint their memories of the celebratory occasion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n At the same meeting,\u00a0a speaker addressing the council used the N-word twice in his remarks. \u00a0<\/p>\n It bothered Mills Bean so much so that she wrote the council in support of a motion<\/a> to ban the use of the N-word and the C-word at its meetings \u2013 a proposal that was ultimately passed in late July<\/a>. She wrote that young people being exposed to \u201cthis kind of vitriolic and hate filled language is not only sad, it\u2019s just plain unacceptable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n “It hurt my heart. It was weirdly like walking Skid Row,” she told USA TODAY, referring to the stretch of downtown Los Angeles that became a homeless encampment. “It was like, why are we like this?”<\/p>\n The ban sparked a First Amendment debate over whether one’s right to use offensive and hateful language at city council meetings impedes on others’ rights to be heard on issues affecting them at governmental meetings.<\/p>\n But the debate extends far beyond Los Angeles.<\/p>\n In recent months, there have been reports on similar actions taken by government entities across the country, including a ban on “language of a personal nature” <\/a>about public officials in Richmond, Virginia, a rule barring complaints or accusations against town officials<\/a> in Houlton, Maine, or a proposal to permanently end public comment<\/a> in Fountain Hills, Arizona.<\/p>\n For Mills Bean, she moved to the area for acting around 40 years ago and watched Skid Row expand exponentially in the years since.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n At one point more than three decades ago, she was invited to wash the feet of people experiencing homelessness as part of a street practice set up by a group of young doctors in collaboration with the Union Rescue Mission<\/a>. As they did so, she said they asked about their housing and medical needs and connected them with resources.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It seemed to be a welcome departure from how people usually interact with them, Mills Bean said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how quickly you can lose your dignity and your hope and everything \u2013 it’s why people want to get high,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can just look in their eyes and you feel this incredible sadness. It\u2019s devastating.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Those types of experiences stayed with her, inspiring her current work on the neighborhood council.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But in the dozens of times she\u2019s gone to city council meetings to address homelessness and other issues, there have regularly been others there using \u201cnasty\u201d language including the N-word.\u00a0<\/p>\n She acknowledged it\u2019s a \u201cdifficult question\u201d to consider if and to what extent such language can be punished in a governmental meeting, one that she believes her late husband<\/a>, comedian Orson Bean, would disagree with her on.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Though he wasn\u2019t a communist, Bean in a 2014 interview<\/a> described being \u201cblacklisted\u201d for years after showing up to Communist Party meetings to woo a woman in the early 1950s.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a posthumously published Newsweek interview<\/a>, Bean said he received flak from the other end of the political spectrum over time as others in the industry learned of his conservative politics and that Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart, who died in 2012,<\/a> was his son-in-law.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI smell a blacklist today the same way I smelled it back then,\u201d Bean said. \u201cYou just can\u2019t get it on paper.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Though Mills Bean said her late husband would be similarly disturbed by the way in which some people express themselves as city council meetings, he was ultimately against censorship.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the freedom to be unkind,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have the freedom to do whatever the (expletive) we want, and it includes being nasty \u2013 that’s the weird thing about freedom.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Free speech groups warn of potential litigation against the city<\/p>\n The council passed the measure despite warnings from First Amendment groups<\/a>, which said the ban would be unconstitutional<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wayne Spindler, an attorney with a long history of disrupting<\/a> city and neighborhood council meetings with the N-word and other inflammatory language, told USA TODAY his efforts to protect his right to use offensive language is \u201cfor the young people.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf people don\u2019t start standing up right now, there isn\u2019t going to be anything left of this country,\u201d Spindler said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Spindler previously pledged to sue the city over the council\u2019s word ban. Though he said he may still do so, he thinks the organizations who publicly opposed the ban should take on that burden.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stephanie Jablonsky<\/a>, senior program counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said the organization \u201cabsolutely can get involved\u201d in the matter but added that FIRE takes on legal cases based on submissions through their website<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n David Snyder,<\/a> executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the organization is \u201cmonitoring\u201d the situation \u201cfor now.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI will say the city is very exposed to liability as a general matter,\u201d he said. \u201cThis ordinance is just blatantly unconstitutional.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The city council previously told USA TODAY the motion was not meant to suppress free speech.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis motion is about preserving access and safety for everyone, not censoring ideas, but safeguarding the ability of all residents to speak and be heard without intimidation or verbal abuse,\u201d a council spokesperson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The spokesperson reiterated that sentiment in an email to USA TODAY on Sept. 16, saying council chambers are limited public forums \u201cwhere reasonable rules of decorum apply.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis motion preserves public access by ensuring all residents can safely engage with their government,\u201d they said. \u00a0<\/p>\n Interruptions contribute to ‘very discouraging’ process of attending meetings<\/p>\n Going to city council meetings involves a three-hour roundtrip commute for Norma Chavez. Even after getting to city hall in downtown Los Angeles, she told USA TODAY it can be an additional ordeal to find parking, get her name on the list to speak during public comments and wait potentially hours to be given her 3-minute block to address the council.\u00a0<\/p>\n She once made it to the meeting but had to leave before her turn to speak because she had to make the long drive back home to pick up her daughter from school.\u00a0<\/p>\n It can be a \u201cvery discouraging\u201d process made even more difficult by people who disrupt the meetings with foul language, she said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The ban was a welcome development for Chavez, who said such epithets do nothing to meaningfully address local issues but are instead \u201calmost like an assault on a person.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Regardless of how one feels about the council members or city policies, she said, \u201cwe all deserve respect.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a personal issue for Chavez, who currently serves as vice president of the Sun Valley Area Neighborhood Council<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n She\u2019s received hateful emails and said, similar to the city council meetings, the neighborhood council meetings can be disrupted by people using offensive language. It even prompted a member to step down from their position on the council, she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s a time and place for indecent language, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat would maybe be okay at a bar or party with your friends, but I don\u2019t think it’s okay at a city council meeting,\u201d Chavez said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n ‘There is no real easy answer to this’<\/p>\n The language and manner of some speakers has turned the city council chamber into a \u201cpolitical theater,\u201d said Shakeel Syed<\/a>, executive director of the Los Angeles-area organization South Asian Network.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a struggle for all of us,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no real easy answer to this.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Syed submitted a statement in support of the ban<\/a> on behalf of his organization. He said the group \u201crelies on being able to provide public comment or advocate\u201d during city council meetings and that its members are \u201cexposed to hateful language\u201d in that pursuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n He estimated that members of his organization attend city council meetings between four and six times each year. The topics they wish to address are typically related to immigrant rights, health and public benefits and tenants’ rights, though he recently showed up to address the military and federal law enforcement presence in the city<\/a> as part of President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s response to protests over immigration raids.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He takes no issue with people angrily addressing, even screaming, at city council members because \u201cthat\u2019s what they signed up for,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He acknowledged that it can, however, create a \u201cfeeling of discomfort and uneasiness\u201d among audience members.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI believe as a society it behooves us to really struggle with these types of challenges, where there is either no clear answer or multiple answers,\u201d Syed said, adding that he hoped such efforts would result in solutions that both protect free speech and promote \u201ccivility and mutual respect.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n