An Arizona mom recently arrested for speaking at a public meeting filed a lawsuit on Tuesday alleging the city policy used to justify her arrest violates the First Amendment.
“I wanted to teach my children the importance of standing up for their rights and doing what is right — now I’m teaching that lesson to the city,” lead plaintiff Rebekah Massie said in a statement. “It’s important to fight back to show all of my children that the First Amendment is more powerful than the whims of any government official.”
The incident in question occurred during the city of Surprise’s Aug. 20 City Council meeting. Massie used the public forum as an opportunity to criticize the conduct of the city attorney.
During her testimony, Massie was cut off my Mayor Skip Hall, who accused her of “attacking the city attorney personally” and violating rules governing public meetings. After a short verbal back and forth, Hall called on the law enforcement official overseeing the meeting to arrest Massie, despite her protests the guidelines were “unconstitutional” and violated her “First Amendment rights.”
The Arizona mom was subsequently detained and charged.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, the lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Surprise’s “Council Criticism Policy,” which prohibits residents giving remarks at public meetings from leveling “charges or complaints against any employee of the City or members of the body.” Massie and co-plaintiff Quintus Schulzke, a Surprise resident, allege the policy “violates the First Amendment.”
“When Massie exercised her constitutional right to criticize officials at a City Council meeting, a right ‘high in the hierarchy of First Amendment values,’ … the Council Criticism Policy and Mayor Hall ensured she left the meeting in handcuffs,” the lawsuit reads. “That might be how repressive regimes treat government critics, but it’s an affront to our Constitution.”
In addition to alleged First Amendment violations, plaintiffs cite Arizona law, which, as summarized in the suit, “permits members of the public to criticize members of a public body during a public comment period, providing that at ‘the conclusion of an open call to the public, individual members of the public body may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the public body.’”
Hall, the city of Surprise, and Steven Shernicoff, the officer who arrested Massie during the Aug. 20 meeting, are named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Massie is represented by attorneys with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The First Amendment advocacy group indicated shortly after Massie’s arrest its plans to sue Surprise on her behalf, writing on X it would “see [the city] in court.”
“No American should be told to ‘stop talking’ or go to jail simply for speaking their minds at a city council meeting,” FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh said in a statement. “Public officials are elected to serve the people — not silence them.”
Massie has requested the court to issue a preliminary and permanent injunction barring Surprise from enforcing the Council Criticism Policy during future meetings. She’s also asked the court to declare that defendants’ use of the policy against her during the Aug. 20 meeting “violated [her] First Amendment rights” and that the rule “violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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