The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NCLF) sent a letter to the Guilford County Board of Commissioners on Jan. 27 expressing concern that the Board’s recent decision to ban multimedia presentations during public comment period violates the First Amendment.

In October, Jodi Riddleberger, a Guilford County resident affiliated with a group called Conservatives for Guilford County (C4gc), played a video as part of her allowed three-minute public comment. After the presentation ended, Board Chairman Marvin L. Alston indicated his displeasure with the video as an “unpaid commercial for candidates” and remarked that from that point forward, the County should try to “screen videos” for content. The Board subsequently voted, without public input, to ban audio/visual presentations during public comment period, but later indicated that groups wishing to show videos during Board meetings could ask to be placed on the Board’s meeting agenda. However, Chairman Alston and staff later denied Riddleberger’s requests to be placed on the agenda.

“It appears that the County’s actions with regard to Ms. Riddleberger, as well as the passage of the ban on audio/visual presentations during public comment period, constitute violations of the First Amendment,” reads the letter from Katy Parker, ACLU-NCLF Legal Director. “First, we believe that the general requirement that individuals can show videos only if approved and placed on the agenda is an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech. Further, Chairman Alston’s specific comments and actions against Ms. Riddleberger suggest that these new rules, while they appear to be content neutral, are a thinly veiled disguise for impermissible content, or even viewpoint, discrimination.”

In the letter, Parker asks the Board to reconsider their actions and reverse the ban on audio/visual presentations during public comment period.

Read the letter here.