An expert on constitutional law weighed in on the Amarillo City Council's clapping ban this week, saying that the ban could be unconstitutional, as its enforcement appears to be aimed at certain individuals.
On Friday, Dale Carpenter, chair of constitutional law at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, told the Texas Standard that he believes that the City Council's ban on clapping could be unconstitutional, as it appears to be aimed at certain individuals attending meetings. Carpenter said that legally, City Councils are allowed to set some rules of decorum that maintain orderliness, but those policies must be "content neutral" to ensure that certain viewpoints are not being silenced. However, the current ban may not fall under that definition in its application.
"While a City Council is entitled to have content neutral policies that control the environment of the meeting so that people can speak and be heard," Carpenter said, "...but there are two important restrictions on that power, one of them is that the government cannot enforce an otherwise content neutral policy in a way that it targeted at certain people for their expression. The second is that any kind of policy that the City Council has has to be at least a reasonable policy...it has to be the case that citizens are able to make their views heard."
Carpenter went on to say that while the Amarillo City Council's policy appears to be content neutral on its face, the way that it is enforced is not content neutral. Carpenter also said that this is the first instance he has seen in which a City Council has completely banned clapping as a means of expression.
The discussion over clapping at City Council meetings in Amarillo drew national interest earlier this month when Amarillo resident Kip Billups was arrested after clapping in a meeting. Billups was handcuffed inside of the City Council Chambers after refusing to comply with Mayor Ginger Nelson's order that he stand. Billups was booked into the Potter County Jail and charged with Disrupting a Meeting.
For more information, please visit www.texasstandard.org.
Photo by Nelson Campaign
To hear the interview, visit:
https://soundcloud.com/texas-standard/does-amarillos-no-clapping-policy-pass-constitutional-muster