LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – California city Huntington Beach is fighting a lawsuit brought by a woman who says she was ordered to publicly denounce the activist group Antifa by telling the court she was merely swallowed up by the political process.
Shayna Lathus, a public school teacher, was appointed by the city council to a non-paid post on the Huntington Beach Citizen Participation Advisory Board but was removed after a spat with current mayor Kim Carr.
Carr bested Lathus in a city council election in 2018 and afterward appointed Lathus to the CPAB. But trouble began between the two when Lathus was photographed next to Antifa members at an immigration rally in 2019.
Carr told Lathus to denounce Antifa on social media, Lathus’ lawsuit says. Lathus posted that she supports law enforcement officers and immigrants’ rights and was not aware Antifa would be present at the rally.
Carr allegedly told Lathus that the post didn’t go far enough and announced on Twitter that she was removing Lathus from her post, the lawsuit says – “Those who do not immediately denounce hateful, violent groups do not share my values and will not be a part of my team.”
Carr is now the city’s mayor as it fights Lathus’ First Amendment lawsuit.
“Plaintiff lived by the political sword, and she died by the political sword,” the July 30 motion to dismiss says. “She alleges that she accepted appointment to the Advisory Board ‘because it presented her with an opportunity… to gain experience and name recognition locally as a springboard to further a career in politics.’
“In other words, she saw it as a political steppingstone. Commensurate with that purpose, she was appointed to the position by a then-allied member of the City Council… then later removed by that same Councilmember when her actions ceased to reflect the Councilmember’s views, in furtherance of the Councilmember’s own First Amendment rights.
“These events are nothing more than the ordinary functioning of the political process. As such, they do not give rise to a claim for a violation of Plaintiff’s First Amendment rights.”
Huntington Beach code allows councilmembers to appoint one citizen as “his or her proxy” to the CPAB, the city says. Carr was right to remove a proxy whose political views didn’t align with hers, it says.
The motion cites the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which wrote in another case “the First Amendment does not succor casualties of the regular functioning of the political process.”
“Here,” the motion adds, “Plaintiff was a ‘victim’ of no more than this normal political jockeying – a consequence she knew could befall her by entering the political arena to further her career.”