Since 2020, city councils have grappled with the phenomenon of Zoombombing as virtual trolls disrupt public comment with hate speech.
League of California Cities Regional Public Affairs Manager David Mullinax said this issue started during the COVID-19 pandemic as councils attempted to make meetings accessible and socially distanced for the public.
“We are grappling with it as well,” Mullinax said. “I don’t see this stopping anytime soon.”
With no established state legislation, local governments in California must decide how to address the issue while still upholding the First Amendment.
Mullinax said that legislation is in the works but for now, cities across the Central Coast are individually deciding what to do—whether it’s by banning virtual comments entirely or establishing protocols to remove speakers from meetings.
David Fleishman, the city attorney for Atascadero and former Solvang city attorney, has dealt with Zoombombers multiple times in city council meetings, most recently in Atascadero during a June 11 meeting in which Pride Month was discussed by public speakers.
In addition to residents who attended the meeting and spoke in person, advocating for the city to pass a Pride Month proclamation, three anonymous, virtual speakers spoke against it.
“We are degrading as a society,” one of those virtual speakers said, while another condoned the bullying that an LGBTQ-plus child had experienced in the Atascadero school system, among other derogatory and hateful comments.
The third speaker was cut off from Zoom when they transitioned to the topic of white supremacy, which Fleishman said he found personally offensive.
According to Fleishman, the first two were allowed to continue speaking because they spoke on topics that were being addressed by the council and, although uncomfortable, the comments were on a topic that was arguably within the councils’ jurisdiction and did not include any physical threats.
“Unfortunately, they were allowed to continue,” he said at the meeting.
Hate speech, Fleishman said, is tricky to catch before it happens and can be protected by the First Amendment. In November 2023, the Solvang City Council experienced inflammatory and racist comments from virtual users.
After those incidents, the council proposed a new policy that would have granted the mayor the ability to mute hate speech, issue a warning, and remove the speaker if the issue persists. However, according to Solvang City Clerk Annamarie Porter, the policy hasn’t yet been adopted by the city.
Fleishman said that city council meetings are not the place for residents to bring up just any topic they find important; it must fall under the council’s jurisdiction.
“What a city council meeting is, is a meeting of the board of directors of a municipal corporation and that the public is allowed to attend by statute,” he told the Sun. “But ultimately, it is a business meeting of the city council and there’s business to be conducted. So, when the speech being exercised interferes with that business meeting, that’s where the line gets drawn.”
In June, the Atascadero Zoombombers were given their time to speak publicly at the meeting, however the comments were muted from the public recording available on YouTube.
“I am old enough in my practice as a lawyer to remember a time before we had local cable access or Zoom or any remote opportunities for members of the public to participate in city council meetings,” he said, adding that city councils aren’t required to offer virtual comments or meetings, but can provide them as a courtesy for those who can’t attend in person.
According to Fleishman, because cities aren’t required to hold virtual meetings, the city can choose what comments are available online and what aren’t.
“The city is not obligated to put the YouTube [video] up at all in that particular case,” he said. “So, if it gets muted, that’s something the city has the ability to do, but it’s not obligated to provide YouTube recordings on its website or anywhere else.”
There are no new policies in Atascadero regarding virtual public comments and any upcoming changes are in the “discussion phase,” Fleishman said. For now, the council is not allowing virtual comments.
The SLO City Council prohibits live virtual comments and requires video comments to be submitted no later than three hours before each meeting for review, thanks to Zoombombers who made multiple racist comments during the Feb. 6 meeting where it voted to proclaim February as Black History Month.
Anti-LGBTQ-plus Zoombombers made their voices heard at the Arroyo Grande City Council’s April 23 meeting. When the virtual comments would transition into what City Attorney Issac Rosen deemed to be hateful speech, he interjected and warned that if their comments didn’t align with city business, or if they used defamatory language, they would be removed from the meeting.
Rosen didn’t respond to the Sun’s request for comment.
Some residents who attended Atascadero’s June 11 meeting felt that the council didn’t draw the line soon enough to stop the speakers.
At the council’s next meeting on June 25, public commenters said the council had “failed spectacularly.”
Resident and Atascadero Pride Festival Founder Thom Waldman attended both meetings and wasn’t happy with the council’s reaction to the Zoombombers.
“The issue I’m having is there was no action taken by the mayor to stop what was happening. They are trying to cloak it under free speech,” Waldman told the Sun. “And the city attorney was saying that because it wasn’t a physical threat, we couldn’t do anything about it.”
Gala Pride and Diversity Center Director of Operations JBird has experienced other city councils react differently than Atascadero’s to Zoombomers.
JBird pointed out that Arroyo Grande City Attorney Rosen stopped commenters before hate speech started and set clear expectations about cutting people off if they crossed the line.
“In comparison to the Atascadero City Council, and from watching the video, I saw that that city attorney chose not to set those expectations, chose not to cut it off, and gave it more time,” JBird said.
JBird said the Atascadero City Council didn’t do its job during the virtual public comments, and noted that Fleishman only cut off the speaker when he was personally offended.
“We’re like, ‘OK, wait a minute. So, it has to be personal first,’” JBird said.
Reach New Times Staff Writer Libbey Hanson, from the Sun’s sister paper, at lhanson@newtimesslo.com.