The Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners simply got it wrong on Tuesday. In deciding to follow the recommendations of an ethics board, the commissioners trampled on the First Amendment rights of their colleague Tommy Hunter.
Hunter made some social media comments that, frankly, were not very nice. They were comments that do not reflect well on elected officials, and the commissioners pointed to that in their reprimand. That, however, should not be their decision to make as a board. Individually, let them condemn Hunter’s remarks in any way they see fit. But when they meet as a board, wielding the power of the government, they have no business holding someone else’s protected speech up for judgement. Certainly, they should not reprimand someone for speech that many people find objectionable.
A day before Gwinnett’s decision to reprimand Hunter, the United States Supreme Court heard a First Amendment case involving trademarks of offensive names. It upheld the right of a band to have a name that many find racist.
“It offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion on the case.
That is pretty plain. It also isn’t hard to figure out. Speech that says puppies are cute and DUI is bad hardly needs protection. It is speech that expresses ideas that are offensive that requires such defense. Hunter’s social media post calling John Lewis, the Democratic Congressman and civil rights icon, a “racist pig” surely meets the offensive part of that. But, it also meets the standard for protection.
This standard was established during the civil rights era in a Supreme Court ruling in a case called Times v. Sullivan. That ruling established the right for people to say or write not nice things about public figures.
Specifically, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was facing perjury charges in Montgomery, Ala. A group of ministers took out an advertisement in the New York Times attacking the charges and the process that set them in place.
Some of the men who saw to it those charges were filed sued the ministers, their group and the Times. In lower courts, the Alabama officials won, but the Supreme Court overturned those verdicts. In effect, many of Lewis’ colleagues helped establish those very protections that allowed Hunter to say what he likes about Lewis. And to say it without threat of reprimand from any government body, including the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners.
That point is interesting and more than a little bit ironic. Also interesting and ironic was a comment from one of the people who spoke at Tuesday public hearing on Hunter’s reprimand. This woman concluded her comments by calling Hunter a “racist chicken.”
Lynette Howard, Gwinnett’s District 2 commissioner, made reference to Hunter’s First Amendment rights during the deliberative part of Tuesday’s meeting. She readily condemned Hunter’s “racist pig” comment.
However, when pointedly asked about the “racist chicken” statement, she correctly defended the person’s right to make it. Pressed, she refused to admit that it was similar to Hunter’s statement, and she simply refused to explain how it was wrong for Hunter to called Lewis a “racist pig,” but fine for someone to call Hunter a “racist chicken.”
The same general question was put to Chairman Charlotte Nash. She said the chicken comment was OK because it was made by a private citizen, where the pig comment was made by an elected official. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that elected officials give up part of their First Amendment rights simply by being elected.
Overall, Nash insisted it was not a First Amendment issue. She said Hunter’s overall conduct led to his reprimand. That is an – interesting – position to take. The vast majority of comments from citizens focused on Hunter’s comments. The clear majority of the board deliberations focused on the comments.
Nash, herself, talked at length about how troubled she was by Hunter’s comments. She talked briefly about Hunter’s early departure from commission meetings to avoid public comments. She didn’t respond when asked to provide any other examples of Hunter’s behavior.
Clearly, this was primarily about Hunter’s word – his protected words. For Nash to suggest otherwise is disingenuous to the highest level.
Nobody came to Tuesday’s meeting to defend Hunter. It is understandable that nobody would come to defend what he said. The biggest shame, though, is that anybody needed to be there to defend his right to say it.
Cosby Woodruff is a staff writer for InsiderAdvantage.
