Compton Attorney Wary of Limit on Speech

Compton’s city attorney is raising doubts about his government’s controversial new policy of limiting the speech of municipal employees.

City Atty. Legrand H. Clegg II said he was not consulted before Compton City Manager John D. Johnson circulated a two-page order earlier this month titled “Limitations on Public Employee Freedom of Speech.”

Clegg said it is probable that he will advise the city to change the policy, which warns that employees can be fired for disruptive statements that detract from the business of running the city, and recommends that employees consult lawyers before talking or writing about the city.

The policy has been widely ridiculed by civil libertarians and employees unions as an unconstitutional gag order. Last week, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 2325, filed a 1st Amendment challenge to the policy in federal court.

Clegg refused to state his exact position on the policy, but in an interview this week said that he was mindful of legal scholars who say such broad guidelines violate 1st Amendment freedoms.

“My opinion would have been different if I had been consulted,” said Clegg. “I want to make it clear to people that I respect the 1st Amendment rights of city employees.”

Repeated phone calls to Johnson, who signed the policy, were not returned.

Clegg’s comments distance him from the policy and could undercut a central defense of its supporters. City spokesmen and Mayor Omar Bradley have said Clegg drafted the speech rules--a fact they cited as evidence that the policy had received close legal scrutiny.

Such a policy was necessary, the city officials said, to quell months of turmoil over Compton’s decision to replace the city’s Police Department with sheriff’s deputies.

But Clegg said that city officials, without his knowledge, had the Los Angeles law firm of Liebert Cassidy draft the policy. He said the mayor and other officials may not have known he was out of town--at a legal conference in Washington--when it was distributed.

Richard Kreisler, a lawyer for Liebert Cassidy, acknowledged Tuesday that he had written most of the policy and had not spoken to Clegg about it.

“I have no doubts that the policy I wrote meets all constitutional standards,” Kreisler said. “It is not a prior restraint on speech. It is not a prohibition on speech.”

Asked about Clegg’s statements Tuesday, Julia Harumi Mass, a Pasadena lawyer representing the union in its lawsuit, called it “odd for the city attorney not to have reviewed a policy that went out.”

But she added: “It also would have been odd for the city attorney to have approved this policy, given its constitutional infirmities.”