An Arizona mother hauled out of a city council meeting in handcuffs in front of her 10-year-old daughter last month is suing the city of Surprise and its mayor for violating her First Amendment rights.
Rebekah Massie, 32, is an active participant in government meetings and had previously spoken out about zoning changes. On Aug. 20, she had complaints about the city attorney’s salary.
Surprise Mayor Skip Hall cut her off minutes into her time on the podium, accusing her of “attacking the city attorney personally,” and told her that specifically criticizing any municipal employee or member of the council — regardless of whether it was by name — violated its policy, referring her to a note to that effect on the back of the council’s agenda.
“I could get up here, and I could swear at you for three straight minutes, and it is protected speech by the Supreme Court,” Massie shot back, as seen in the video of the incident.
“Do you want to be escorted out of here? You’ve got to stop talking,” Hall told her.
Massie reiterated that the policy is unconstitutional, and in response, Hall called Surprise Police Officer Steven Shernicoff to escort her from the building. When Massie argued, telling the officer not to touch her, he placed her in handcuffs and removed her from the room.
Massie’s attorney, Conor Fitzpatrick with the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said the woman was detained for at least two hours, given a “pretty invasive pat down” and fingerprinted — an ordeal that violated her Fourth Amendment rights, according to the lawsuit.
Her daughter did not come with her to police headquarters, Fitzpatrick said, and she was not told of her daughter’s whereabouts throughout the ordeal. She was also charged with trespassing. The status of that charge is unclear.
“Public officials are elected to serve the public, not silence them,” Fitzpatrick told Fox News Digital. “They might disagree with what the public has to say, there’s nothing in the law that says that they have to do whatever the public asks of them, but they do have to listen.”
FIRE, initially founded to file lawsuits against colleges and universities that stifled their students’ First Amendment rights, has also branched out to represent “mayors and chairs abusing their powers to silence and punish people who go to public meetings and say things they don’t like,” Fitzpatrick said, adding that these instances are “more common than they should be.”
