Newspaper Sues City over San Juan Capistrano News Rack Ban

One of the newspapers banned from City Hall and Community Center is now suing the city for violating the First Amendment, the state’s Constitution and San Juan Capistrano’s own municipal code.

A lawyer for Community Common Sense, an advocacy paper often critical of the City Council majority, filed a lawsuit against Mayor John Taylor, Councilmen Sam Allevato and Larry Kramer and City Attorney Hans Van Ligten in Orange County Superior Court Monday.

The defendants “violate the constitutional right of every resident in SJC to access and read newspapers and news publications as they see fit,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order to lift the ban on all newspapers immediately and an injunction to reverse the prohibition permanently.

“It’s mind-boggling what they’ve done,” said attorney Wayne Tate of Laguna Hills. “It’s not too often I’m tongue-tied, but when I look at this, I’m speechless.”

According to the lawsuit, newspapers, such as the Capistrano Dispatch and the Capistrano Valley News, have positioned news racks at City Hall and the Community Center for at least 10 years.

After being told that newspapers must be in racks to be left on city property, officials with Community Common Sense placed news racks at the two city properties in early August.

Four days later, on Aug. 6, the San Juan Capistrano City Council met behind closed doors “under the false pretense of ‘threat of litigation’” to discuss the paper’s new racks, the lawsuit states.

Shortly after, Van Ligten notified all newspaper publishers that their news racks had to go, the lawsuit says. All of the papers complied.

However, such a ban is a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and the press and a similar sentiment in the state Constitution, the lawsuit said.

Newspapers have the right to be in places considered a public forum, the lawsuit says.

“The SJC properties where newspapers and news racks have been banned have been important forums where communication of political, economic and social issues have been expressed through face-to-face speech, writings in newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, as well as picketing, patrolling, and marching, distribution of pamphlets, and addresses to publicly assembled audiences,” the lawsuit says.

The governmental body can’t restrict speech in public forums without expressing a “compelling state interest” that is narrowly defined, the lawsuit says.

City officials have cited the San Juan Capistrano’s anti-litter law as the basis of the news rack ban, but the lawsuit says the city’s own law excludes newspapers from the restrictions on noncommercial handbills.

“Defendants have provided no additional authority to justify their illegal prohibition of Community Common Sense, and absent such authority, defendants are prohibited from banning newspapers and news racks from SJC property,” the lawsuit says.