Three black community activists have filed a lawsuit against Metro Council Chairman and Mayor Pro Tem Scott Wilson, who is white, alleging “viewpoint discrimination.”
In a lawsuit filed earlier today in U.S. District Court, The Rouge Collection Publisher Gary Chambers, local NAACP chapter President Michael McClanahan and Eugene Collins allege Wilson violated their First Amendment rights by having them forcibly removed from the May 10 Metro Council meeting. The three men tried to bring up for discussion the subject of Alton Sterling and the Baton Rouge Police Department’s treatment of African-American suspects during the meeting.
Sterling, who was black, was killed by two BRPD officers on July 5, 2016. A federal civil rights investigation failed to turn up any wrongdoing after a 10-month investigation that ended in May. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office has had the case ever since but has yet to issue any findings.
In their suit, which also names the City of Baton Rouge, the plaintiffs allege they were among six citizens illegally removed from the meeting for bringing up Sterling and the BRPD. The suit claims Wilson ordered McClanahan removed just one second after he said Sterling’s name, and that Chambers and Collins were removed after eight seconds and 2.5 seconds, respectively, because Wilson “did not want to hear their viewpoint.”
“In contrast, Scott Wilson consistently has allowed speakers to finish their time even when they wander far off the agenda topic or explicitly talk about other agenda items—so long as they don’t mention Alton Sterling, criticize [former Baton Rouge Police] Chief [Carl] Dabadie, or criticize Scott Wilson,” the suit alleges.
The lawsuit cites a 2017 U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that refers to “viewpoint discrimination” as the basis for its argument.
“Although a council chair has the power to enforce neutral restrictions on speech to keep a meeting on track, ‘[i]t is beyond debate that the law prohibits viewpoint discrimination’ in such a context,” the suit reads.
Wilson declines to comment, as does Parish Attorney LeAnne Batson. The plaintiffs are not seeking monetary damages in the suit, though they are asking the court to cover their attorney’s fees and court costs. Rather, they are asking the court to declare Wilson’s actions illegal so they can speak out at future meetings, Chambers says.
“The purpose of this suit is to prevent him from doing it again,” he says.
—Stephanie Riegel
