This city wants to make antisemitic flyers illegal as ‘hate litter’
San Diego City Councilman Raul Campillo, standing at the podium, discusses a proposal to increase penalties for ‘hate litter’ at a news conference. Courtesy of Office of Councilman Raul Campillo
By Beth Harpaz September 11, 2023
A member of the San Diego City Council wants to make “hate litter” illegal after the city’s historically Jewish neighborhoods were repeatedly littered with thousands of antisemitic flyers.
“We’re not going to sit by while families and children and faith leaders wake up to these hate-filled and threatening images believing there’s nothing our city can do to protect them,” said City Councilmember Raul Campillo at a news conference last week. “We can do something and we’re going to do it.”
His announcement was spurred by at least eight recent incidents in which flyers were placed overnight on windshields in San Diego’s Del Cerro, San Carlos and Allied Gardens neighborhoods.
The San Diego proposal wouldn’t be the first effort by lawmakers to increase punishment for this type of activity.
Predecessors in the South
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law in April that makes it a first-degree misdemeanor to intentionally dump litter onto private property to intimidate or threaten people, while bumping the crime up to a felony if the litter “contains a credible threat” and can be classified as a hate crime.
A group of Georgia state legislators, led by the state’s only Jewish state legislator, Esther Panitch, tried and failed to enact a law there earlier this year codifying acts against Jewish people — which would include antisemitic flyers — as hate crimes.
Antisemitic organizations like the Goyim Defense League and other hate groups have repeatedly bombarded communities around the country with disturbing flyers placed on private property — mailboxes, driveways, yards and cars. The flyers have been reported in Florida, Georgia, New York, Maryland and elsewhere, often in Jewish neighborhoods.
The latest incident took place on the Sept. 11 anniversary, when flyers falsely alleging a Jewish conspiracy behind the terror attacks turned up in Portland, Maine.
A First Amendment conflict?
Under Campillo’s proposal, offenders caught distributing flyers with hateful content would face up to a year in jail. Right now, violators, if caught, would only get a ticket. The proposal will have to be taken up by committee and then voted on by the full council, which could take until the end of the year.
“We have to take the penalty higher to send a signal to say that we’re not going to take this lightly,” he said, adding that the proposal would also protect against hate-filled flyers directed at “our LGBT neighbors” and other “racial groups.”
The First Amendment protects hate speech unless it incites lawless action, threatens bodily harm or causes a breach of the peace, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the proposed San Diego ordinance would “plainly violate the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from selectively punishing speech because of its viewpoint. The government can punish hate crimes, which are crimes motivated by the victim’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristics. But the government cannot create a two-tiered system of punishments for littering, on the one hand, and littering while expressing disfavored views, on the other.”
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