An advocacy group is suing the city of Berkeley over meetings the City Council has held in a private conference room to avoid disruptive protests by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
The council has held portions of three meetings in a conference room next to its public chambers after protesters — who want the city to pass a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza — interrupted the meetings with chants, jeering and speeches. Members of the press were allowed into the room for the meetings in November and January, while the public watched and participated via Zoom.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Alameda County Superior Court, a group calling itself the Berkeley People’s Alliance alleged that strategy runs afoul of California’s open meetings law. The suit, which names the city of Berkeley and the City Council as defendants, asks a judge to declare that the council violated the access law and bar it from continuing to hold meetings in the conference room.
The law, known as the Brown Act, allows a government body to meet without an audience if its public meeting is being “willfully interrupted” by attendees.
But that doesn’t give the City Council the right to move its meetings to a private room, according to the alliance. Instead, a complaint filed by the group contends the law requires the council first to try to remove the people who are causing the disruption, then, if the interruptions continue, clear the public out of its meeting chambers and continue the meeting in that venue.
“There is no provision of the Brown Act that permits what the city is doing no matter how much the city prefers its solution over the Legislature’s,” the group’s complaint states. “This lawsuit seeks to compel compliance with the Brown Act and thereby protect the right of the public to be present in person when important legislative decisions are made.”
Protesters have criticized the City Council’s meeting strategy and argued their disruptions are an appropriate tactic, saying city officials should not be allowed to conduct “business as usual” until they condemn an Israeli military campaign demonstrators characterize as a genocide. While some council members have expressed support for a cease-fire resolution, others on the body have opposed the idea, arguing it would increase division within Berkeley while having no effect on the war.
City Attorney Farimah Brown declined to comment on the lawsuit Monday.
Asked about criticism of the council’s meeting strategy in an interview last month, Mayor Jesse ArreguÃn — who has opposed calls to pass a resolution and sparred with demonstrators at several meetings — rejected the idea that it violates the public access law. ArreguÃn said the option to participate via Zoom goes beyond the Brown Act’s requirements, and meeting in the conference room has allowed the council to conduct its business without instigating a confrontation between protesters and law enforcement by trying to clear attendees from the public chambers.
“We have taken extra steps to enable transparency and participation,” he said. “The alternative is that we would have to arrest everyone and drag them out of the room — how is that a good outcome?”
