Los Angeles City Council bans ‘N’ and ‘C’ words at public meetings
The Los Angeles City Council has banned the use of the “N” and “C” words in its meetings, citing SCOTUS precedent.
- Actress Alley Mills Beane supported banning certain racial slurs after hearing them being used by the Los Angeles City Council.
- The ban, passed in July, has sparked a First Amendment debate and free speech groups say it is unconstitutional.
- Some residents and community leaders support the ban, arguing that hateful language prevents public participation in government meetings.
- Mills Bean, known for his work on The Wonder Years, pointed out the complexity of the issue and acknowledged the importance of freedom of expression.
One day in June 2024, Alley Mills Bean approached the podium at the Los Angeles City Council meeting with Councilmember Tracy Park, holding her recently won Emmy award.
She had won the award the previous year for her role as hook-wielding serial killer Heather Webber on “General Hospital.”
Park acknowledged both Mills Bean’s “incredible professional accomplishments” and her “selfless volunteerism and selfless duty” to the Venice community. Mills Bean is the chair of the Venice Neighborhood Council’s Homelessness and Housing Committee.
The actress, known for playing Norma Arnold on “The Wonder Years,” told USA TODAY that the recognition was “a great honor.”
But what she also remembers was the recognition that others received that day. − Including local high school academic decathlon teams − He also described how the offensive language used by some at the gathering could tarnish the memory of the celebration.
At the same meeting, a speaker addressing Congress used the N-word twice in his remarks.
This bothered Mills Bean so much that she wrote to Parliament in support of a motion to ban the use of the N-word and C-word in Parliament. The proposal was finally passed in late July. She wrote that it is not only sad but completely unacceptable for young people to be subjected to “this type of vitriolic and hateful language.”
“It was heartbreaking. It felt like I was walking down Skid Row in a weird way,” she told USA TODAY, referring to an area of downtown Los Angeles that has become a homeless encampment. “Why did this happen to us?”
The ban sparked a First Amendment debate over whether the right to use offensive and hateful language at city council meetings interferes with the right of others to be heard on issues that affect them at government meetings.
But the debate extends far beyond Los Angeles.
In recent months, there have been reports of similar actions taken by government agencies across the country, including a ban on “language of a personal nature” about public officials in Richmond, Virginia, a rule banning complaints and accusations against city employees in Houlton, Maine, and a proposal to permanently end public comment in Fountain Hills, Arizona.
In Mills Bean’s case, she moved to the area for acting nearly 40 years ago and has watched Skid Row expand by leaps and bounds in the years since.
At one point more than 30 years ago, she was invited to wash the feet of people experiencing homelessness as part of a street clinic set up by a group of young doctors in collaboration with the Union Rescue Mission. At that time, they asked about housing and medical needs and connected them with resources, she said.
Mills Bean said the break from the way people usually interact seems like a welcome departure.
“It’s amazing how quickly you can lose your dignity, your hope, everything. That’s why people want to get high,” she said. “I just look into their eyes and see this incredible sadness. It’s devastating.”
Those experiences stayed with her and inspired her current work with the neighborhood association.
But in the dozens of City Council meetings she attended to address homelessness and other issues, she regularly heard members use “offensive” language, including the N-word.
She acknowledged that it was a “difficult question” to consider whether and to what extent such statements would be punished in government meetings, but she believed her late husband, comedian Orson Bean, would disagree with her on the issue.
Although Mr. Bean was not a communist, he said in a 2014 interview that he had been “blacklisted” for years after showing up at Communist Party meetings in the early 1950s trying to woo women.
In a posthumous interview with Newsweek magazine, Mr. Bean said that over time he received criticism from the other side of the political spectrum as others in his industry learned of his conservative politics, and that Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart, who died in 2012, was his son-in-law.
“I still smell the blacklist just as much as I felt it then,” Bean said. “It’s impossible to put that on paper.”
Mills Bean said her late husband would have been similarly concerned about the way some people expressed themselves on the city council, but ultimately opposed censorship.
“We have the freedom to be unkind,” she said. “We have the (expletive) freedom to do whatever we want. And that includes being mean. That’s the weird thing about freedom.”
Free speech group warns of possible lawsuit against city
The council passed the bill despite warnings from First Amendment advocates that the ban was unconstitutional.
Wayne Spindler, an attorney with a long history of disrupting city and neighborhood association meetings with the N-word and other inflammatory language, told USA TODAY that efforts to protect the right to use offensive language are “for young people.”
“If people don’t stand up now, there will be nothing left in this country,” Spindler said.
Spindler previously promised to sue the city over the council’s ban on speaking. He said they may continue to do so in the future, but believes the burden should be borne by the groups that publicly opposed the ban.
Stephanie Jablonski, senior program advisor for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said the organization “absolutely could get involved” in the matter, but added that FIRE will take on cases based on submissions from the website.
David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the organization is “monitoring” the situation “for now.”
“As a general matter, I would say the city is very likely to be held liable,” he said. “This ordinance is clearly unconstitutional.”
The City Council previously told USA TODAY the motion was not intended to stifle free speech.
“This motion aims to maintain access and safety for everyone, not censor ideas and protect the ability of all residents to speak and be heard without intimidation or abuse,” a council spokesperson said.
A spokesperson reiterated that idea in an email to USA TODAY on Sept. 16, saying Congress is a place of limited public access where “reasonable decorum applies.”
“This motion maintains public access by allowing all residents to safely engage with government,” they said.
Interruptions make the meeting participation process ‘very discouraging’
Norma Chavez has a three-hour round trip commute to get to City Council meetings. She told USA TODAY that even once she gets to City Hall in downtown Los Angeles, finding a parking spot, putting her name on a list to speak during public comment and waiting perhaps hours before being given a three-minute block to address the City Council can be an added ordeal, she told USA TODAY.
She attended one meeting, but had to leave before it was her turn to speak because she had to make the long drive home to pick up her daughter from school.
It can be a “very discouraging” process, made even more difficult, she said, when someone interrupts a meeting with foul language.
The ban is a welcome development for Chavez, who said such epithets do not meaningfully address local issues and are instead “close to assault on people.”
No matter what you think about council members or city policies, “we all deserve respect,” she says.
This is also a personal issue for Chavez, who currently serves as vice president of the Sun Valley Regional Neighborhood Council.
She said she has received harassing emails and, like city council meetings, neighborhood association meetings can be disrupted by people using offensive language. One councilor even resigned from his council position because of it, she said.
There’s a time and a place for obscene language, she says.
“Maybe it’s OK at a bar or at a party with friends, but I don’t think it’s OK at a city council meeting,” Chavez said.
“There’s really no easy answer to this.”
Shakir Saeed, executive director of the Los Angeles-area group South Asian Network, said the language and demeanor of some speakers turned the City Council into “political theater.”
“This is a fight for all of us,” he said. “There’s no really easy answer to this.”
Said submitted a statement on behalf of the organization in support of the ban. He said the group “relies on being able to provide public comment and advocacy” during City Council meetings, and that its members are “exposed to hateful language” in its work.
He estimates members of his organization attend four to six City Council meetings each year. The topics they like to address usually revolve around immigrant rights, health and public benefits, and tenant rights, but they recently appeared to address the presence of military and federal law enforcement in the city as part of the response to protests over President Trump’s immigration raids.
He doesn’t have a problem with people making angry speeches or shouting at city council members. “Because that’s what they signed up for,” he says.
However, he acknowledged it could cause “a sense of discomfort and anxiety” among spectators.
“I believe we have an obligation as a society to seriously address these types of challenges where there is no clear answer or multiple answers,” Said said, adding that he hoped such efforts would lead to solutions that protect free speech and promote “civility and mutual respect.”
Breanna Frank is USA TODAY’s First Amendment reporter. Please contact bjfrank@usatoday.com..
USA TODAY’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded by the Freedom Forum in collaboration with our journalism funding partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
