Today, a federal judge ruled that Most & Associates’ clients Michael McClanahan and Eugene Collins won a free speech lawsuit that had been pending for more than seven years.
The lawsuit involved the actions of Scott Wilson, the former head of Baton Rouge’s legislative body. In particular, Mr. Wilson had the plaintiffs and others forcibly removed during public comment at a May 10, 2017 meeting of that legislative body, commonly known as the Metro Council.
On the agenda that day was the city’s handling of officer-involved shootings. Members of the community showed up to express the view that Baton Rouge’s government should not return to business-as-usual without first resolving how to respond to the Baton Rouge Police Department’s controversial killing of a man named Alton Sterling.
Although members of the public should have been allowed the usual three minutes to comment on each agenda item, Mr. Wilson ordered the police to remove six citizens during their public comment as soon as they said the words “Alton Sterling” or signaled any sort of criticism of the police department.
Those six citizens included plaintiffs McClanahan and Collins. When Michael McClanahan, now the head of the state’s NAACP chapter, got up to the microphone to speak, Scott Wilson ordered police officers to “take him out” less than one second after McClanahan said the words “Alton Sterling.”
And Eugene Collins, formerly the president of the Baton Rouge NAACP, was only at the podium for 2.5 seconds - and had barely begun to speak - before Scott Wilson ordered police to “take him out.”
Later that year, McClanahan and Collins filed a federal lawsuit, contending that Wilson and the City had violated their First Amendment rights. In 2021, a trial was held before Judge John W. deGravelles of the Middle District of Louisiana. Today, Judge deGravelles issued a fifty-five page decision, concluding that plaintiffs Michael McClanahan and Eugene Collins had won their case “against Defendant Scott Wilson in his official capacity as Mayor Pro Tempore, on their claims for violations of their First Amendment rights.”
The judge rejected Wilson’s defense that he had forcibly removed McClanahan and Collins merely to enforce a neutral rule about speaking “off-topic.” Judge deGravelles pointed out that Wilson lacked any evidence that the rule was actually enforced neutrally. In particular, the judge noted that there was “no record evidence of any community member being removed from a Metro Council meeting for ‘being off-topic’ except those who spoke about Alton Sterling and the police.”
Given the way Scott Wilson treated citizens differently based on what they said, Judge deGravelles concluded that Wilson was acting with an “improper motive” – that of suppressing particular viewpoints.
As a result, the judge issued a declaratory judgment confirming that Scott Wilson (and through him, the City of Baton Rouge) had violated McClanahan and Collins’ First Amendment rights. He also indicated that McClanahan and Collins were entitled to their reasonable attorneys fees and costs.