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Free speech at Los Angeles City Council: 5 must-read headlines

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If you ever been to a Los Angeles City Council meeting, you’ll remember them. They’re the gadflies who fill out speaker cards to opine as many agenda items as possible, usually as an excuse to rail against whatever injustice they feel the city has imposed on them.

They’re obnoxious time wasters who infuriate those who want the council meetings to move more efficiently. Yet time and time again, a court has, rightly, side with the gadflies and ruled the City Council has violated the 1st Amendment by cutting off or ejecting two particular activists from meetings. The council has even temporarily banned the plaintiffs -- Matt Dowd and David “Zuma Dogg” Saltsburg – from speaking at city meetings, The Times’ Emily Alpert Reyes reported.

The council’s enforcement of its Rules of Decorum clearly crossed the line, U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson ruled, because in one instance the council tried to silence criticism (and some profanity) directed at the council president, which is political speech and should be protected.

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So Dowd and Saltsburg prevailed in court, but what do they get for their trouble? A dollar each in nominal damages.

That’s $2 too much. Dowd and Saltsburg have performed a community service by challenging the city’s problematic enforcement of its Rules of Decorum. An attorney for the ACLU noted that the rules could be used to “chill criticism,” and that concern alone should make the City Council take a hard look at how it handles public-speaking restrictions.

But Dowd and Saltsburg were more like performance artists than political activists. At a certain point in their gadfly evolution, the point of the criticism got lost and their speech was designed more to provoke reaction. They were like children testing the adults to see what they could get away with, until finally Saltsburg and Dowd honed their annoyance skills to such a point that they knew exactly which buttons to push to make City Council members lose their cool.

The two men made their point: Speech is protected, even when it’s really annoying and wastes time. The judgment should be reward enough.

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Follow Kerry Cavanaugh on Twitter @kerrycavan and Google+

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