Two community members are suing Louisiana’s Lafayette Consolidated Government, the municipal body that oversees the Lafayette Public Library (LPL), for denying the right to free speech in public board meetings. Lynette Mejía and Melanie Brevis, community members and patrons of LPL, are co-plaintiffs in the suit, which also names Board of Control President Robert Judge. According to local newspaper The Acadiana Advocate, the lawsuit alleges the violation of Mejía’s and Brevis’s First Amendment rights to free speech as well as their 14th Amendment rights, along with violations of the Louisiana Open Meetings Law. Judge, the lawsuit states, “instituted a raft of unconstitutional policies and practices” as library board president.

In 2018, Mejía and Brevis began to regularly attend library board meetings to voice their apprehension over the direction the board was taking the library. In an interview with LJ, Brevis listed concerns including the loss of a millage in 2018 after Michael Lunsford, an “out-of-parish political operative” ran a campaign encouraging people to vote against it. In addition, protests against the library’s drag queen story hour; and the redirection of $10 million in library funding to drainage, infrastructure, and parks projects across the parish in 2019, are examples of an “increasingly conservative board with an agenda…that has tried to undermine library principles of free speech and freedom to information, and to curtail the decision-making power of library staff.” This year, the February board meeting agenda included a new library policy to restrict any material considered sexually explicit for library users under the age of 18.

The two founded the advocacy group Lafayette Citizens Against Censorship (LCAC) in November 2021 when they realized that “we needed an organized effort to stop this very real…assault on our library system,” said Mejía.

“Lynette and I were feeling very much alone in the fight, although we knew there were a lot of people in the community who cared,” added Brevis. “We knew we could do something to start organizing in our parish and make people aware of the very dangerous decisions being proposed and, in some cases, passed at almost every board meeting.”

In 2021, the LPL Board of Control rejected grant funding for a program on the theme of voting rights. The board stated that the panelists chosen by library staff for the event were “too far to the left” and the topics in general were too controversial. Doug Palombo, board president at the time, ordered then-Director Teresa Elberson to find a speaker who would represent a conservative viewpoint. When a speaker satisfactory to the board was not identified, the board voted 5–2 to decline the grant money and cancel the program. Elberson retired soon after.

As board meetings grew increasingly contentious, Judge instated various meeting rules such as forbidding public commenters to use board members’ names in their comments, despite allowing similar use of language from those in support of the board’s actions, according to The Acadian. Judge also posted legal documents defining “disturbing the peace” on meeting room doors. “The new rules imposed by board president Judge were just too egregious to ignore anymore,” Mejía said. “Once we started having armed guards staring down speakers [during public comment]...it became so difficult to speak freely that I felt something had to be done.”

Brevis told LJ that when she spoke during public comment at the January board meeting “I had my microphone cut off and was escorted out of the room by two armed deputies.” They did so with no comment other than, “Judge says it’s time for you to go,” she said. “If people like us, who attend public meetings regularly and have spoken multiple times, feel intimidated and concerned that our speech will result in being removed from the library, how…will other members of the public who have been hesitant to speak feel?”

Mejía hopes for a variety of positive outcomes from a successful ruling in the federal lawsuit. Her primary goal is to ensure that everyone in the community “feels comfortable coming before the board and expressing their opinion, in full, without fear of intimidation. I would like to see the [meeting] rules Mr. Judge has put into place rescinded, and I would like the armed guards removed from the room.”

The plaintiffs are also calling for mandated public meeting training for all citizens on a board or other governing position with the Lafayette Consolidated Government. Mejía told LJ, “When I started this journey, I wrongly assumed that government officials would hold [the right to free speech] as sacred, but I’ve come to realize that not only do some of them not…some of them don’t even understand the basic concept of how to allow free expression. This needs to be corrected.”

Brevis believes the suit will “show how the First Amendment right to free speech benefits everyone. This is not a Democrat versus Republican, or liberal versus conservative, issue.”

STANDING UP FOR DEMOCRATIC PROCESS

LPL Director Danny Gillane chose not to provide comment about the lawsuit to LJ on the grounds that the library itself is not part of the suit, nor is he a member of the Board of Control. He did make the following statement regarding intellectual freedom and the right to free speech: “In its 76-year history, the Lafayette Public Library has not removed any materials from its shelves due to a complaint or challenge. Additionally, the Lafayette Public Library has not changed its selection nor its purchasing practices with regard to the content purchased, nor does the library have plans to change its selection or purchasing practices.”

Mejía added that LPL library staff members “have truly shown grace under fire during this entire period, and I couldn’t be prouder to support them.”

Katie Schwartzmann, attorney with the First Amendment Law Clinic at Tulane University, New Orleans, represents the plaintiffs. “This case is really about open government and the ability of the public to participate in the democratic process,” Schwartzmann told LJ. In addition to the First Amendment nature of the argument, there are also statutes in the Louisiana Constitution and in Louisiana open meeting laws “that prohibit the restrictions on public participation and debate in Lafayette.”

Schwartzmann noted that the new meeting rules put in place by Judge’s practices may lead to a chilling effect on free speech—“when citizens self-censor as a result of government action,” she explained. While Lafayette residents want to be heard on issues pertinent to the library, “rather than allow them to give their full opinions, the board has brought in sheriff’s deputies, threatening removal and criminal prosecution for public speech without a clear standard that lets people know what conduct would lead to getting sanctioned.”

The defendants “should file an answer or responsive pleading by March 31, after which the court will convene a scheduling conference and set a trial date, as well as other deadlines,” said Schwartzmann.

The Lafayette Public Library Board of Control did not respond to Library Journal’s request for comment.