Ordinance proved threatening to the First Amendment

In the face of a complaint from the ACLU that it had violated the First Amendment, the Calabasas City Council has backed down and rescinded a law on how the city gives out community service grants to nonprofit organizations. The law disqualified any organization with a board member who had ever sued the city, city council members or city employees.

The ACLU pointed out that litigation is protected by the US and California constitutions as form of petitioning government for redress of grievances.

The council had worked intensely for two months and four meetings on the wording of the law last spring. But neither the city attorney nor the three lawyermembers of the council (Bozajian, Groveman and Wolfson) expressed any First Amendment concerns. Were they snoozing during their law school courses in constitutional law? It took a non-lawyer, community activist Toby Keeler, the conscience of Calabasas, to do the citizen's duty and alert the ACLU, which quickly saw the obvious constitutional issues.

The city attorney's incredible defense was that the council never intended to disqualify those who had sued the city and that the offending language had been rejected, a defense directly belied by the video tapes, staff reports and minutes of the council meetings. The ACLU didn't buy it.

After two prior closed meetings, on Aug. 27 the council quietly rescinded the law in public session in five minutes without oral explanation to the citizens of how this came about, and without thanks to Toby Keeler and the ACLU for keeping the city on the right side of the First Amendment. Bob Benson Calabasas