photo by: City of Lawrence screenshot

Justin Spiehs speaks at the Nov. 7, 2023, Lawrence City Commission meeting.

Updated at 6:14 p.m. Friday, Dec. 29, 2023

The City of Lawrence is asking a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a resident who claims his First Amendment rights were violated when he was participating in public comment at City Commission meetings.

The resident, Justin Spiehs, 42, an anti-mask protester who has also targeted the LGBTQ community, sued the city in November in the U.S. District Court of Kansas, claiming that members of the Lawrence City Commission, former mayors Lisa Larsen and Courtney Shipley, had repeatedly violated his right to free speech by preventing him from speaking during commission meetings because his topics — frequently likening COVID masking and vaccine mandates to child abuse — were not “germane” to city business.

In its motion filed Friday, the city argues that Spiehs’ lawsuit should be dismissed because the commission meetings are “limited public forums,” meaning the City Commission can place reasonable restrictions on speech, such as requiring that comments be limited to three minutes and be germane to city business. The city’s policies on public commenting apply to everyone, the city argues in its motion, and the policies “are narrowly tailored to serve the limited purpose of conducting an efficient meeting.”

Spiehs, who has referred to commissioners as “Nazis,” among other disparaging comments, alleged in his suit that he attended four commission meetings during which he was interrupted and, on two occasions — Oct. 11, 2022, and July 18 of this year — was asked to leave.

The city contends that on both of those occasions Spiehs, even after several warnings, was making comments that were “irrelevant, disruptive, and hindered the Commission’s authority to conduct an efficient and orderly meeting.” Spiehs’ “viewpoints” were not being discriminated against in those instances, the city argues; rather, commissioners were enforcing a reasonable restriction on speech for the sake of orderly and dignified public meetings. The city argues that restrictions related to decorum at public meetings have consistently been upheld by courts.

The city’s motion argues broadly that Spiehs’ lawsuit fails to state a claim and also that the court lacks jurisdiction on the grounds that Shipley — now no longer on the commission — and Larsen have qualified immunity based on their roles as public servants tasked with conducting orderly meetings.

Spiehs had also argued in his suit that the city’s public comment policy was unconstitutionally vague – a claim the city argues against on two grounds: First, a person of “ordinary intelligence would understand what speech the written policy prohibits” — that is, speech that’s not related to the business of the commission — and, second, the policy is not constructed in a way that leads to arbitrary enforcement.

photo by: Shawn Valverde

Justin Spiehs comments at the Lawrence City Commission meeting on Nov. 7, 2023.

Spiehs’ lawsuit also included the Lawrence Public Library as a defendant, but the city on Friday filed a motion asking the court to sever the city and library claims, arguing that Spiehs’ claims against the library were wholly different from his claims against the city and presented “distinct factual circumstances.”

Spiehs argued in his suit that his First Amendment speech rights were violated by library staff, and he named the library board of directors and multiple library employees as defendants. According to the suit, Spiehs attended two public events at the library, one in May and the other in June, and was asked by police and the library’s security personnel to leave. At the May event, which was about how new state laws affected gender markers for transgender people, the suit said police were called after Spiehs arrived, “and it was determined that Mr. Spiehs’ sign was ‘obscene'” and that he could not be at the library with the sign; he exited the building after police arrived. At the June event, which featured a drag performer reading books aloud, the suit claimed that Spiehs was told by security that he couldn’t cause a disruption at the event, and he left when two law enforcement officers showed up at the library.

Spiehs’ attorney, Linus Baker of Stilwell, recently won a First Amendment case against the Olathe school board. In that case, a jury found that a school board president who removed a commenter from a school board meeting had illegally discriminated against her based on the content of her speech. The City of Lawrence noted in Friday’s motion to the court — the same court that heard the Olathe case — that the court rejected the notion that the Olathe board’s policy requiring comments to be “germane” was unconstitutionally vague, even though the plaintiff prevailed on the “viewpoint discrimination” ground.

Baker has also filed a suit on Spiehs’ behalf against the Lawrence school district, claiming that his First Amendment rights were violated when officials banned him from making public comments at various meetings and also restricted when he could be on district property, as the Journal-World reported.

As the Journal-World reported, Spiehs has been convicted of criminal charges in Douglas County for an incident that took place at one of his protests. In November 2021, Spiehs was protesting at a coronavirus vaccine clinic at West Middle School, 2700 Harvard Road, and allegedly confronted a man and his 9-year-old son. Spiehs was accused of tearing the paper off of his protest sign, shouting at the man and child and threatening them with the large stick that the sign was attached to. He was originally charged with two felony counts of aggravated assault and one count of interference with a law enforcement officer, but in 2022 he entered a plea agreement and was instead convicted of two misdemeanors, endangerment and endangerment of a child. He was granted probation in August 2022, as the Journal-World reported.

The same week that Spiehs sued the city, another frequent public commenter, Michael Eravi, and a local journalist and advocate for the homeless, Chansi Long, sued the city claiming that their First Amendment rights were violated when they were trespassed from the city-supported homeless camp in North Lawrence, as the Journal-World reported. The city has not yet responded to that lawsuit. Long was struck and killed by a train a week after the suit was filed.