(Carolina Public Press)—A Cabarrus County man is suing his local board of commissioners for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights when they removed him from a meeting for “naming names” of county DSS employees during a public comment period.
The Liberty Justice Center, a national litigation firm, filed a complaint in federal court on behalf of plaintiff James Campbell on Nov. 21. The complaint states that during a regular board meeting on April 15, several individuals, including Campbell, complained about their negative experiences with county child protective services and named specific employees and contractors while doing so.
Board Chairman Steve Morris and Commissioner Kenneth Wortman warned the audience about a policy that prohibits “naming names,” early during the comment period, but Campbell did so anyway when it was his turn to speak.
Wortman then interrupted Campbell’s comments, citing the policy. When Campbell refused to back down, Morris asked sheriff’s deputies to remove him. The officers escorted Campbell out of the room. The board banned him from attending meetings for 90 days.
Cabarrus County posted a video of the full meeting, corroborating the account laid out in Campbell’s legal complaint.
Attorney Buck Dougherty, who is representing Campbell, told Carolina Public Pressthat the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners’ crackdown on “naming names” is part of a larger trend of governments preventing members of the public from criticizing specific public employees during open meetings.
Those policies are sometimes referred to by legal scholars as “Lord Voldemort cases,” Dougherty said — a reference to the Harry Potter villain whose name is rarely spoken out loud by characters of the beloved children’s series, instead being referenced as “he who shall not be named.”
“Some suggest that just the act of naming a name is somehow harassment, which we don’t believe it is, and we don’t believe it is in this particular situation,” Dougherty said.
“Having a prohibition against naming names very simply is a content-based restriction, and content-based restrictions under the First Amendment are disfavored … The government has to show a compelling interest that is narrowly tailored for the government to have such a restriction.”
Pate McMichael, director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition and professor of media law at Elon University, agreed with Dougherty that the incident likely was a violation of Campbell’s rights under the First Amendment.
North Carolina statutes allow government councils to establish reasonable rules governing the conduct of the public comment period and provide for the maintenance of order and decorum, McMichael said. That doesn’t mean that they can use those rules to stifle public criticism.
Instances like this one in Cabarrus County don’t appear to be one-offs. CPP reported in June that the Yanceyville Town Council attempted to restrict the use of recording devices at its meetings under a similar guise of maintaining decorum.
“If everything I’ve seen here is accurate, it gives me real concern that they’re using this statute as a means of censoring people,” McMichael said.
DSS dispute the root of initial conflict
According to the complaint, Campbell had been regularly attending meetings since December 2023 and began addressing the board during the public comment period in January. During the March regular meeting, the complaint stated that Campbell listed the names of seven people, including several county employees and one sitting judge, “in the context of questioning corruption allegedly occurring within the county.”
The complaint does not explain the context of Campbell’s comments, but videos of commissioners’ meetings posted to YouTube reveal that Campbell and others had consistently been making accusations of corruption against individuals associated with the county’s Child Protective Services since at least January.
Campbell claimed in a Jan. 16 meeting that his two children and two step-children were seized from him and his wife for “false accusations of neglect and an injurious environment” in August 2023.
Campbell’s dispute with Cabarrus County DSS is not mentioned in the complaint, and neither he nor Dougherty wanted to comment on the situation during a phone interview with CPP. The focus of this case is solely on the alleged First Amendment violations and nothing else.
“The outcome that I’m looking for is not an outcome for myself. It’s an outcome for the citizens of Cabarrus County,” Campbell said.
“I can say at least for two years, certain individuals have been silenced in those Board of Commissioner meetings, and that’s not right.”
Does written ban using employee names exist?
Another wrinkle to the case is the question of whether Cabarrus County’s Board of Commissioners actually has a written policy against “naming names.”
During the April 15 meeting, Commissioner Wortman implored Morris to enforce the supposed policy after the first speaker during the public comment period complained about a social worker employed by the county.
“Chairman Morris, according to our policy we are not supposed to be naming names, and we’ve had this discussion multiple times, and so I’m gonna ask you to do something about it as the Chairman of the Board,” Wortman said.
Morris agreed with Wortman, saying, “Our policy states that names for County employees are not to be named. You have repeatedly disregarded those rules. We’ve discussed them many times. If it happens again, we will ask the Deputy to remove you from the chambers and you will be banned from public comments for 90 days.”
The complaint states that Campbell asked for a copy of the policy during and after the April meeting but never received one. CPP also requested a copy of the policy, and the county returned a “Public Participation Policy” document dated May 2, 2022.
The public participation policy prohibits speakers from uttering “personal, ad hominem attacks towards board members, county employees or members of the public” and also bans disclosing personally identifiable information about minors, but it does not explicitly prohibit naming adult individuals.
Regardless of what the written policy says, Dougherty said, the Board’s interpretation and enforcement of that policy still constituted a violation of the First Amendment.
“The way they’re carrying out (the policy) and their actions are important and critical,” he said.
CPP asked Cabarrus County to respond to the allegations in the lawsuit, but communications director Jonathan Weaver declined to comment since neither the county government nor the Chairman of the Board had been served with the lawsuit as of Wednesday.
“The county was provided a review of the information contained in the suit and looks forward to correcting inaccuracies with a response at the proper time,” the email read.