The city of Los Angeles will pay $215,000 to end a lawsuit filed by a black man who was kicked out a city meeting for wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood.
Police escorted Michael Hunt out of a Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners meeting in 2011 for refusing to remove the white hood and a shirt that had a racial slur used to describe African Americans on it, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The lawsuit claims a city official told Hunt, who is black, the racist outfit violated their rules of decorum and if he didn’t take it off, he would be ejected.
Hunt is a regular gadfly at public meetings to address allegations of discrimination and uses the garb to “turn the tables,” according to his attorney, Stephen Rohde, told the Times.
He wore the hood to a Los Angeles City Countil meeting in 2009, but instead of putting up with Hunt’s outfit, the members walked out of the meeting in protest, according to NBC Los Angeles.
During the 2011 incident, Hunt’s schtick ended as police walked him out of the meeting and cited him for disturbing a public assembly. Some attendees of the meeting claim the outfit was not disruptive, but rather, it was “mildly distracting and confusing,” the Times reported.
The citation was later dismissed, but Hunt filed the lawsuit anyway and claimed he was wrongfully arrested and the city violated his rights to free speech by not letting him speak.
Instead of letting the lawsuit spiral into an expensive trial, city officials voted to settle.
“These rules of decorum should not be used to silence people unless they engage in actual disruption of the meeting,” Rohde told the Times. “And actual disruption doesn’t mean upsetting people or offending people.”
The rules prohibit “disorderly or boisterous conduct” such as threatening language, whistling or feet stamping.
Hunt won a settlement from the city in 2009 for $264,286 after he challenged vending restrictions on the Venice Boardwalk – where he works as a vendor.
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