Michael Hunt | Michael Kohlhaas dot org

UPDATE 2: This malcriado piece of crap has now received a CF number. It is CF 16-1104-S1. Subscribe and track, friends.

UPDATE: Emily Alpert-Reyes and David Zahniser, following up on my work,¹ have published an excellent article in the Times on this very matter.

Herb Wesson, our putatively esteemed City Council president, is infamous for his inability to maintain his dignity in the face of criticism. He’s arranged for the City Attorney to trump up charges against Wayne Spindler, the guy with the puppets. He’s tried to instigate violence to cause the ejection of Armando Herman, the guy who makes faces. Wesson has spent years now tweaking Council rules to thwart members of the public who hurt his delicate feelings during public comment. His minion Mitch Englander, of course, is no better. The two of them even tried to amend the LAMC last year to make it easier to have putatively disruptive commenters arrested, although that particular unconstitutional abortion seems to have withered and died.

So it was shocking but not surprising to find this steaming little heap of a motion in today’s transmission from the City Clerk, wherein Wesson, seconded by Englander and a bunch of other folks who failed civics class, seeks to amend Council rules to allow ever-lengthening penalties for people who have been ejected from public meetings for disruption. If someone’s ejected from one meeting they’re ejected from all meetings for that day. The next time they’re banned for three days, and so on. You can read the entire text after the break.

The problem is that this rule almost certainly violates the state constitution, which guarantees via the Brown Act the right to attend and comment at public meetings. One can’t really be deprived of constitutional rights without due process, so Herb Wesson’s unilateral decision that one is being disruptive at one meeting can’t sensibly be enough to get one banned from other meetings. If this rule goes into effect it’ll give Herb Wesson the unilateral power to ban commenters from meeting for six days.

Of course there’s no principled distinction between six days and two weeks, between two weeks and a month, between a month and a year, between a year and forever. Obviously Herb Wesson doesn’t have the unilateral power to ban someone from public meetings forever, so he can’t do it for six days either. The Brown Act explicitly gives legislative bodies the power to clear the room for disruption, so obviously also the power to eject disruptive individuals.² But there’s no law that allows the City Council to bar people from attending a different meeting because they allegedly disrupted an earlier meeting.

The state constitution, on the other hand, explicitly gives them the right to attend the later meeting. Now, of course, I’m not a lawyer, and I’m just shooting off my mouth about this, but you’ll see, I am correct. Turn the page for a transcription of the motion.
Continue reading Herb Wesson Has Evidently Completely Lost His Shit Due To City Hall Gadflies — He Introduced A Motion In Council Today To Amend Rules To Allow For Escalating Penalties For Disrupting Council Meetings — Just Like In Grade School — Almost Certainly A Violation Of The Brown Act And The State Constitution — But Herb Wesson Hasn’t Let That Stop Him In The Past So Why Would He Worry Now? →

Federal Judge Josephine Staton will hear this case if it doesn’t get tossed out first.

Recall that last July, puppet-wielding crackpot Angeleno rabble-rouser-sans-rabble, Wayne Spindler, filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles alleging that the Council’s rules of decorum and the manner in which they’re enforced violated the first amendment. Pleadings are available here. Well, today the City of Los Angeles filed a motion to dimiss. This is hardly unexpected, of course, but it was pretty interesting to see that one of the reasons they gave for dismission was that Spindler had copied his complaint from fellow puppet-wielding crackpot Michael Hunt:

The Complaint as a whole alleges all claims and both causes of action against all parties, drawn substantially from another person’s complaint; such a pleading is a sham, vague and ambiguous particularly as to individually named Defendants, Matthew Johnson, Steve Soboroff, Charlie Beck, Mitchell Englander, Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

That the other complaint they’re talking about was Hunt’s can be seen in the request for judicial notice that the City filed along with its motion, which includes a copy of Hunt’s complaint. Of course, the City famously paid Hunt $215,000 over that complaint, so one supposes there’s good reason for choosing it to copy.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this motion to dismiss is that Charles F. Eick, the magistrate judge in the case, responded to the motion on the very the same day it was filed, first stating that he was going to decide on it without a hearing, and next stating that he was going to treat it as a motion for summary judgment rather than as a motion to dismiss. Furthermore, he had a series of exceedingly stern warnings for Wayne Spindler, making it seem as if the case is going to get tossed out summarily quite soon. This reading of matters is also borne out by the fact that Eick gave Spindler a mere 30 days to respond, which in federal court time is essentially yesterday. Here is the document filed by Eick, and after the break you can find excerpts.
Continue reading City Of Los Angeles Files Motion To Dismiss Wayne Spindler’s July 2016 Crackpot Case On Grounds Of, Inter Alia, Plagiarism, On Very Same Day Magistrate Judge Eick Waves Magic Judge Wand, Changing It To Motion For Summary Judgement, Warns Spindler To Get With The Program Or Else His Case Is Outta Here →