Fifth Circuit questions Baton Rouge’s ejection of public speakers

City lawyers say the mayor pro tem was enforcing on-topic rules and dismissing the city “with prejudice” wiped out the lawsuit. The men who won at trial want the judgment to stand.(CN) — Almost a decade after police hauled two Baton Rouge community leaders out of a Metro Council meeting for discussing Alton Sterling, the Fifth Circuit is now deciding whether the city was just enforcing the rules or silencing a viewpoint.Eugene Collins and Louisiana NAACP president Michael McClanahan went to the May 10, 2017, meeting wanting the city to stop “business as usual” until it dealt with Sterling’s 2016 police killing. That day’s agenda included investigations of officer-involved incidents. When they tried to connect that to Sterling during public comment, then-Mayor Pro Tem Scott Wilson ordered officers to remove both men. Collins lasted about two and a half seconds at the podium. McClanahan was cut off after mentioning the shooting while speaking against a sewer item. A third plaintiff, activist Gary Chambers, was also ejected but lost his claim.In a September 2025 ruling, U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles found McClanahan and Collins had their First Amendment rights violated through viewpoint discrimination and by being barred from a public meeting. He sided with the city against Chambers and on racial discrimination claims. The city itself had already been dismissed as a redundant party; the case proceeded against the official holding Wilson’s old job, Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Noel.Arguing for Noel Wednesday, attorney Celia R. Cangelosi noted the plaintiffs once sued both the city parish and the mayor pro tem as the same municipal defendant. In 2020, the city was dismissed “with prejudice.” After that, she told the court, “there was no case to be tried.”“When you dismiss with prejudice, your suit against the city parish makes the case against the mayor pro tem in his official capacity moot,” Cangelosi said.U.S. Circuit Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt asked whether the claims were now irrelevant or could be relitigated. Cangelosi said they were now moot.U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith steered her to the merits.“It all comes down to who’s the final decisionmaker or final policymaker, right?” Smith asked.Cangelosi said the panel should never reach that question. If it did, she argued, the mayor pro tem was only enforcing rules the Metro Council and the Open Meetings Law wrote. Because he did not set the “goals and means,” he was not a final policymaker. The district judge, she said, used “decisionmaker” and “policymaker” as if they were the same.The Ronald Reagan appointee then asked how later meeting videos hurt the city’s “substantial rights.” Cangelosi’s answer: motive.“I don’t think you can use subsequent acts to prove the intent or motive of the mayor pro tem on the date at issue,” she said. She also argued Michael McClanahan’s circumstances were similar to Gary Chambers, who lost at trial: off-topic, warned and backed by an NAACP post urging members not to let the council do “business as usual.”“I don’t see any difference except Chambers was a little more violent,” she said.Attorney William Most, for McClanahan and Collins, called the jurisdiction theory a housekeeping fight dressed up as a knockout punch. Dropping the city parish defendant while keeping the official capacity chair, he said, is something courts do “all the time” to avoid two sets of lawyers trying the same case. George W. Bush appointee U.S. Circuit Judge Catharina Haynes asked: “But why with prejudice?”“Because there was no intent to reopen any claims against the city parish under that name,” Most replied. Even if the dismissal were sloppy, he added, the fix is to undo it, not to erase a trial that happened.Engelhardt pressed. Allocating speaking time, he said, can sound like a sergeant-at-arms enforcing someone else’s rules, not writing policy.“How does that make him a policymaker?” the Donald Trump appointee asked.Most’s reply was the city code: The public speaks “only with his permission,” and the chair’s procedural ruling is final. He also reminded the court the city quashed Wilson’s deposition by calling those choices “policy making” and claiming legislative immunity, only to argue at trial Wilson was not a policymaker.Engelhardt asked whether Most agreed the plaintiffs were off topic. No, Most said, at least not Collins. “He got seven words out (before being silenced). He said: ‘I oppose this item because on July … ’ and that’s as far as he got before he was removed.” That was on an agenda item about officer-involved shootings, Most said, and it lasted “about two and a half seconds.”The city’s problem, he argued: the pattern the videos showed.“Defendants could not point to a single example in the history of Baton Rouge where anyone had been removed for being off-topic, except those who criticized the police.”Later clips were used to test even-handedness, he said, not to invent a custom. The city never briefed the second holding, kicking McClanahan and Collins out of the chamber, not just off the microphone. “People in America have a right to attend public meetings,” Most said. “Appellant does not mention that and does not challenge that anywhere in her brief.”The city wants the court to throw out the judgment, while McClanahan and Collins want the ruling affirmed. The panel took the case under submission without indicating when it would rule.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads