The caller came on the line during public comment at last week’s Lakewood City Council meeting and immediately launched into a hateful, antisemitic tirade that made claims about Jews, repeating multiple oft-recited tropes.

From the audience in the council chambers, someone shouted: “Are you going to allow this?”

Lakewood’s new mayor, Wendi Strom, took to the microphone as the room erupted in murmurs of disbelief and disgust at what was being uttered.

“I’m sorry, you guys — this is free speech,” Strom said.

Lakewood became the latest municipality in Colorado to be barraged by a group that coordinates call-ins to city council meetings across the country. Its members use the anonymity of remote participation and the protection of the First Amendment to unleash hateful words on an unsuspecting audience.

Wheat Ridge’s city council was targeted in November, and Durango got hit last month.

The Anti-Defamation League has tracked at least 140 incidents of this type across the country since last summer, said Jeremy Shaver, senior associate regional director for ADL Mountain States. The organization has identified the group behind the calls as the Goyim Defense League, which works through an offshoot it formed recently called the City Council Death Squad.

The disruptions come as incidents of antisemitism have been on the upswing in recent years, exacerbated by reactions to the Israel-Hamas war that began Oct. 7.

“It is unfortunate that these types of disruptions by extremists are impacting our civic life,” Shaver said. “Because this is a growing trend, we encourage people to prepare for interruptions like this.”

But exactly what preparation looks like is a tricky road, given the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on government censorship of speech.

The speaker at last week’s Lakewood meeting even taunted the council, talking up his First Amendment right between a fusillade of anti-Jewish tropes, epithets and other derogatory language.

“The problem these government bodies face is that when you open up your building to public comment, you’ve triggered the highest level of First Amendment protection,” said Jessica Smith, a partner at Holland & Hart in Denver and chair of the law firm’s First Amendment group. “You can’t restrict on the basis of content.”

“Time, place and manner” restrictions possible

But that doesn’t mean government bodies, such as city councils, have no control over speech in official proceedings, Smith said. Not all speech is protected by the First Amendment — for instance, defamation or threats of violence.

And governments can impose “time, place and manner” restrictions, such as the common three-minute speaking limit or a requirement that people address a particular agenda item that is in front of the council, rather than expounding on random topics.

But generally speaking, she said, restrictions on speech must be content-neutral.

In Lakewood’s case, the first hateful call last week was followed by several more, prompting the mayor to call for a recess. When the council reconvened, Strom announced that no more remote public input would be aired at the meeting but that anyone still on the line could leave comments on the city’s online public input site, LakewoodSpeaks.org.

That may have been a problematic fix by the city, Smith said, because it appeared to come in direct response to what was being said by those calling in.

“Anytime you use time, manner and place restrictions after you’ve heard the speech, you are opening yourself up to a claim that you potentially violated someone’s First Amendment rights,” she said.

Strom, who was sworn in just two months ago to lead Colorado’s fifth-largest city, said the whole incident took her by “absolute and complete surprise.”

There was already an animated crowd at Monday’s council meeting because of some hot-button topics that were on the agenda, with many attendees wanting to talk about the migrant crisis. The meeting didn’t break up until after 1 a.m. Tuesday.

“Just running the meeting alone was a heavy lift,” she said.

“Zoombombing” took off during pandemic

The practice of streaming government meetings online — especially with remote participation — exploded during the pandemic, as city facilities shut down and public health officials ordered people to stay home.

And almost as soon as the computers fired up, bad actors began disrupting meetings with racist remarks or displays of pornography.

The phenomenon became so widespread that it earned the moniker “Zoombombing,” complete with its own Wikipedia entry. Some city councils — including those in Bellingham, Washington and Claremont, California — suspended Zoom or call-in comments after their meetings were hijacked by hateful commentary in recent months.

So far, Strom said, there hasn’t been any talk of eliminating remote participation during Lakewood City Council meetings. Nor does Wheat Ridge intend to cut off online back and forth at this point, Mayor Bud Starker said.

“We feel that’s an important function in people’s ability to address their representatives,” he said.

When the Wheat Ridge meeting was bombarded with online antisemitic comments in November, the council reduced public speaking time from three minutes to one minute as a way to curtail the vile content. It also instituted a sign-in requirement for all online speakers at future meetings, requiring them to provide a name, address and email address.

“We’re able to make rules that accommodate the orderly flow of business,” Starker said.

Just over Colorado’s northern border, the Laramie City Council experienced an online antisemitic assault in October. According to the Laramie Reporter, the council created a rule after that meeting requiring any member of the public who wishes to address the council remotely to turn on their cameras at home and show their faces.

The Anti-Defamation League has put out a bulletin on how city councils can deal with racist or abusive public comments. It urges public officials, at the time comments are being made, to speak up, advising that “your own words and actions as government leaders can play a critically important role in countering such hate.”

Last Monday, as the first caller continued his verbal assault during Lakewood’s meeting, most of the 11-member council stood up and walked out of the room. The audience applauded their move.

Strom addressed the audience once the meeting resumed.

“During our time to speak, it is a First Amendment right to speak,” she said. “We are not required to listen, and that is why you saw our councilors leave the room.”

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