Radical right members of local councils and school boards around the country are energized like never before over coronavirus vaccine mandates and mask requirements. They are churning up far-right rabble rousers and either actively encouraging the disruption of local meetings or turning a blind eye to it, as has been obvious in recent St. Louis County Council meetings. School boards, working hard to put masking policies in place before in-person classes start in earnest after Labor Day, are having trouble getting urgent work done because of meeting disruptions. That's a huge problem all by itself.

In order to regain control, some elected officials have resorted to votes of censure against fellow elected officials who are leading such disruptions. A non-partisan elected member of the Houston Community College Board of Trustees decided to fight back in court after he faced a censure vote, and now the case is heading to the Supreme Court. Censure, he argues, violates his First Amendment free-speech rights. Which is utter nonsense, regardless of whether the Supreme Court has agreed to hear him out after a federal appeals panel in New Orleans found enough basis in his argument to let his case proceed.

Censure in most cases is not a serious punishment. It's tantamount to an official scolding and carries little punitive weight other than to embarrass the offender in hopes that the disruptive behavior will stop. At no time was the Houston trustee, David Wilson, ever subjected to prior restraint of his free speech rights.

His antics long preceded the pandemic and had nothing to do with masking and vaccines. But if his First Amendment claim is upheld, the reverberations could unleash a tsunami of similar claims by others asserting a right to be insulting, to use foul language, or to engage in whatever loud, disruptive behavior they deem necessary to get attention. If taken to the extremes, the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 could credibly argue that they were simply exercising the right to disrupt under the First Amendment.

The dangers this case poses for democracy's survival and long-honored standards of civil discourse are enormous.

Wilson used a website and interviews to air his grievances with his fellow trustees. The New York Times reported that he also orchestrated robocalls and hired private investigators to determine if another trustee had lied about her residency. That's what prompted the censure in 2018.

The conservative New Orleans appeals panel unanimously determined that reprimanding an elected official "for speech addressing a matter of public concern is an actionable First Amendment claim." Curiously, it was only the scolding that irked the judges. The Houston trustees also revoked Wilson's reimbursement privileges for official travel, which the judges had no problem with.

We're all for First Amendment rights, but this case goes way beyond the bounds of a legitimate free-speech claim.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

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