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Mimi German disrupted the Portland City Council meeting in protest of Mayor Ted Wheeler's performance regarding police tactics related to protests, people of color, and homeless issues.

(Mike Zacchino/Staff)

The crowd at the Portland City Council meeting Wednesday could have served as Exhibit A for Mayor Ted Wheeler's proposed ordinance to establish conduct standards at city meetings and authorize extended bans of people who are disruptive.

It wasn't just that some in the crowd yelled insults at council members. Or that others shouted over the testimony by citizens with whom they disagreed - despite Wheeler's entreaties to respect others' views. Or the discouraging moment in which one woman had to pause in her public comments to ask someone "don't tell me to shut my face, please." Perhaps the most unsettling part of Wednesday's session was the sense that the meeting was taking place only by the grace of those present, and that, if the impulse hit, they might orchestrate a shutdown of the council meeting. Just as some had done last week, last month and the month before.

There is no question that this repeated hijacking of city business and public input has to stop. Wheeler and the rest of the City Council have shown great patience and professionalism in the face of people railing at them, lobbing accusations of ulterior motives and branding them as "fascist" - apparently for trying to do the work that Portland voters elected them to do. At this point, Wheeler and company could propose anything that the public would likely support in hopes of getting city business back on track.

Editorial Agenda 2017

Boost student success

Get Oregon's financial house in order

Help our homeless

Honor our diverse values

Make Portland a city that works

Expand access to public records

________________________

Check that. Almost anything. And unfortunately, as currently drafted, the proposed ordinance offered by Wheeler falls into the category of policies that should get bounced. Specifically, the provision that would grant a meeting's presiding officer the ability to bar a disruptive person from attending future meetings replicates a city practice that has already been declared unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge Michael Simon.

In that 2015 case, the city kicked out activist and frequent disruptor Joe Walsh from a City Council meeting after an outburst. In addition, he was barred from City Hall and Council meetings for the next 60 days. While Walsh didn't contest his exclusion on the day of his disruption, he sued over the legality of being barred from City Hall for such an extended period of time.

He won. As Simon wrote in his December 2015 opinion, the mayor has the authority to regulate several aspects of speech at a council meeting and may have someone removed for disruption. But an exclusion that bars someone from future public forums, which are designed for public debate, goes too far and violates people's First Amendment rights, he wrote.

While the case predates Wheeler's term, it's surprising that the City Attorney's office wouldn't recognize the legal futility of reviving the prospective exclusion. Simon's opinion wasn't ambiguous in the least. "Defendants have not pointed to any appellate court decision, nor was the Court able to locate any such decision, allowing an incident, or even several incidents, of actual disruption to justify the prospective exclusion of an individual from future public meetings," the opinion states. "The Court declines Defendants' invitation to be the first federal court in the nation to uphold such a broad prospective exclusion ordinance."

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Thankfully, the ACLU of Oregon - and Walsh himself - reminded councilmembers Wednesday of the opinion's finer points. To Wheeler's credit, he put the brakes on the proposal Wednesday, saying said he would seek input from the ACLU. While it remains to be seen what happens next, he should recognize the foolishness of adopting a proposal whose legality is so clearly dead on arrival.

But there's a message here for disruptors as well. The First Amendment is not a shield for shutting down City Council meetings or other such forums. As Simon noted in his opinion, "even in a democracy, the government need not tolerate actual disruptions of government business. Undisputedly, a presiding officer may remove from an official public meeting anyone who engages in actual disruption," provided that the removal is tied to the disruption rather than the person's viewpoint.

And disruptions risk turning the public off to the compelling concerns that some individuals in the crowd voiced this week. People are feeling desperate and deeply concerned about police shootings and the vast number of people living on the streets. They may feel frustrated by the slow pace of progress. But they should not mistake their passion for a moral imperative to disrupt, interfere and bully. Their grievances do not trump all else, and do not justify trampling over others' rights and needs. Free speech, as well as our government, belongs to us all.

- The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board