An Arizona mother who was escorted out of a city council meeting in handcuffs in front of her 10-year-old daughter last month is suing the city of Surprise and its mayor for violating her First Amendment rights.
Rebekah Massie, 32, is an active participant in government meetings and has previously expressed concerns about zoning changes. On August 20, she complained about the city attorney’s salary.
Surprise Minutes into her time on the podium, Mayor Skip Hall cut her off, accusing her of “attacking the city attorney personally,” and telling her that specifically criticizing any municipal employee or member of the council — regardless of name — violated its policy, referring her to a note to that effect on the back of the council’s agenda.
“I could get up here and swear at you for three minutes straight, and it is protected speech by the Supreme Court,” Massie responded, as shown on video of the encounter.
Do you want to be escorted out of here? “You need to stop talking,” Hall informed her.
Massie insisted that the policy was unlawful, and Hall summoned Surprise Police Officer Steven Shernicoff to accompany her to leave the premises. When Massie fought, telling the officer not to touch her, he handcuffed her and took her out of the room.
According to Massie’s attorney, Conor Fitzpatrick of the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the woman was detained for at least two hours, subjected to a “pretty invasive pat down” and fingerprinted, an encounter that violated her Fourth Amendment rights.
Fitzpatrick stated her daughter did not accompany her to police headquarters, and she was not informed of her daughter’s location throughout the incident.
She was also charged with trespass. The charge’s status is uncertain.
“Public officials are elected to serve the public, not to silence them,” Fitzpatrick told Fox News Digital. “They might disagree with what the public has to say, there’s nothing in the law that says that they have to do whatever the public asks of them, but they do have to listen.”
FIRE was founded to file lawsuits against colleges and universities that stifled their students’ First Amendment rights, but it has since expanded to represent “mayors and chairs abusing their powers to silence and punish people who go to public meetings and say things they don’t like,” Fitzpatrick said, adding that these instances are “more common than they should be.”
In Michigan, the group ousted Eastpointe’s previous mayor Monique Owens for regularly shouting down people who criticized her during public comment periods. According to FIRE and the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit suburb eventually agreed to stop enforcing unconstitutional restrictions on citizens’ free speech, passed a resolution apologizing to the plaintiffs in a lawsuit, paid each plaintiff over $17,000, and designated September 6 as the community’s “First Amendment Day.”
When asked about Massie’s case, Fitzpatrick said FIRE had seen “nothing to this degree.”
The complaint names Quintus Schulzke, a Surprise resident who frequently speaks out at council meetings.
“The rule here impacts people other than Rebekah; people like Quintus, who typically participate, witnessed what happened to Rebekah. The enforced rule seems to cast a gloom. It causes people to self-censor, to say, ‘I’m not going to a city council meeting; I may leave in handcuffs,'” Fitzpatrick told Fox News Digital.
“We’re showing the entire community of Surprise that the First Amendment needs to prevail at city council,” he said afterward. “A government cannot have a law stating, ‘To be heard, you must come to us with praise.’ That is not what the First Amendment means.
“Every American should know that they should feel free to go to their city council meetings and school board meetings and become involved,” according to Fitzpatrick. “What happened to Rebekah is wrong, but the law will protect her. Every American who wants to get active and participate in government meetings, the First Amendment will support them as well.”
