Over the past six months, Cleveland City Council’s public comment rules have been put to the test, leading to a reckoning over the meaning of free speech in our city.
For most of its history, Cleveland City Council did not allow public comment. This had long been a point of contention for many Clevelanders, who felt that barring residents from speaking at meetings limited transparency and insulated councilmembers from their constituents. In early 2021, a coalition of activists formed the “Clevelanders for Public Comment” campaign and pushed for the city to adopt an ordinance allowing residents to speak at meetings. By the end of the summer, 2021, the group succeeded, and the ordinance was adopted.i Over the next two years, while public comments were sometimes passionate and pointed, they became an accepted part of Cleveland city governance.
However, comments grew more and more tense in the fall of 2023. Cleveland was fiercely debating Issue 38, a citizen-led initiative to set aside a small portion of the city’s funds for a People’s Budget directly controlled by residents. While advocates believed it would make the city more democratic, the initiative was opposed by most members of City Council, who saw it as infringing on their prerogatives as elected representatives. The fight reached all the way to the State House, which considered a bill (Senate Bill 158) that would have preempted the city from enacting the People’s Budget altogether.ii
A particular point of contention was the Council Leadership Fund, a PAC controlled directly by Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin.iii Activists had long criticized the fund, arguing it helped funnel corporate money into shielding incumbents and pressuring councilmembers to vote in line with the president. Griffin, a fierce opponent of Issue 38, spent tens of thousands of dollars from the Fund campaigning against the People’s Budget.
At a Council meeting on September 25th, 2023, Cleveland resident Chris Martin took on this issue in his public comments.iv Martin began reading out a list of political contributions to councilmembers from the Council Leadership Fund.
“Sir, the rules are that you are not supposed to address individual leaders,” Griffin admonished.v
“I am not impugning the character of any councilor, I am just saying who has accepted money from the Council Leadership Fund,” Martin replied.
After Martin continued reading from the list, Griffin ordered the microphone muted and had police escort Martin from the chambers. Shortly after his speech, another resident had her microphone cut off after she began making homophobic and antisemitic remarks. After telling her to leave, Griffin declared: “we are not going to allow this platform to be utilized for people to insult and impugn the characters of people in this body, nor are we going to allow people to impugn race, and gender, and sexual orientation or anything else. Those things will swiftly be eliminated.”vi
In December, Martin, represented by the Case Western Reserve University First Amendment Clinic, filed a lawsuit with the Ohio Northern District Court, arguing that his First Amendment rights had been violated.vii He argued that Council was selectively enforcing the rule in a way that unconstitutionally infringed on his right to free speech in a public forum. Andy Geronimo, director of the clinic, explained the importance of the issue to Ideastream:
“Criticism of government, like petitioning government for redress of grievances is directly in the First Amendment,” Geronimo said. “They’re not obligated to maintain this forum, but once they do, they can’t say you’re not allowed to criticize us in this forum.”
Those protections extend to bigoted speech, Geronimo said.
“Some of these things are really offensive, like slurs, derogatory terms… fall within the scope of the First Amendment and can’t be censored on that basis,” he said.viii
Three weeks after Martin’s comment, the issue took on far greater significance. After the Israel-Hamas War began in October, Cleveland saw large demonstrations by Palestinians and allies calling for a ceasefire. One of the top priorities of pro-Palestinian advocates was to get Cleveland City Council to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire, and protesters packed the chambers every week to give public comments supporting such a resolution and criticizing city leaders for expressing support for Israel.
As weeks dragged on, with the death toll in Gaza mounting (as of mid-February, the total stands at over 29,000 Palestinians)ix and with other cities (including Chicago, Detroit, Akron, and Toledo) passing ceasefire resolutions while Cleveland refused to budge, tensions rose. Protests grew more boisterous, with pro-Palestinian audience members cheering and leading chants during meetings. Councilmembers began calling for new restrictions on public comment, including limiting comments to issues on that meeting’s agenda (thus effectively banning statements on Gaza and the ceasefire resolution) and banning non-residents from speaking.x
Ultimately, Chris Martin’s lawsuit may have been what prevented any of those changes from happening. The Northern District issued a temporary restraining order in early January, 2024, which forbade Council from enforcing any rules on public comment except limiting remarks to three minutes, setting a limit of ten speakers, and requiring speakers to pre-register.xi A few weeks later, Council permanently revised its public comment rules to remove the ban on addressing individual members of Council,xii then settled the lawsuit on February 8th.xiii Instead of restricting speech, Martin and the CWRU First Amendment Clinic helped ensure that Cleveland City Council expanded speech.
While the lawsuit may be settled, the issue of free speech at council meetings is far from settled. While there are no limits on subject matter and residency for public comments, the new rules clarified that disruptions like clapping, yelling, and chanting are grounds for expulsion. Council also passed new rules establishing protocols for meeting disruptions, allowing the Council President to order the chambers cleared and conduct the rest of the meeting behind closed doors.xiv This became a live possibility at the February 12th Council meeting, when dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters chanting “pass the resolution now!“ were led out of chambers by police.xv Griffin did not invoke the new protocols to clear the chambers; however, if these demonstrations continue (activists say they will not stop until Council passes a ceasefire resolution, and Griffin has stated that he does not intend to pass such a resolution), he may well do so, leading to tense standoffs between police and protesters and threatening the principle of open public meetings.xvi
The future of free speech in Cleveland will continue to be contested. However, thanks to the relentless efforts of protesters and First Amendment advocates, Cleveland City Hall remains the people’s house.
4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0i-KEHxLNc (19:29-21:30).
6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0i-KEHxLNc (27:50-29:27)
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