Saturday, August 16, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Court weighs Reno case on rights at public hearings

Resident challenges removal from meetings

Denis "Sam" Dehne Citizen critic claims his First Amendment rights were violated

SAN FRANCISCO -- Denis "Sam" Dehne is a self-described "Encyclopedia of Reno Government." Reno's municipal governments, however, call this garrulous gadfly a nuisance.

Dehne has attended every Reno City Council meeting and most other local Reno government meetings since 1995. He usually takes the podium at each of those meetings. Sometimes he plays a guitar and sings. At times, he can be caustic.

"I get channeling from above. I just go to the podium and I talk and I talk," the 62-year-old Air Force veteran said.

On Thursday, while Dehne was attending a Washoe County Airport Authority hearing in which he publicly spoke in a court of public opinion, his lawyer was in San Francisco before a court of law challenging his client's removal from two other public meetings.

At its core, the legal dispute before the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals centers on municipal government's right to keep order at public hearings balanced against the public's right to comment at those meetings.

Dehne claims his First Amendment rights were violated when he was removed from an airport authority hearing after a verbal disagreement with the body's chairman, and again by the mayor during a stormy Reno City Council meeting. He is seeking unspecified damages.

The most recent ejection dates to September 2000, when Richard Hill, then the airport authority's chairman, removed Dehne from its meeting, and Dehne was arrested.

Dehne, while at the podium, ridiculed an airport authority policy that demands speakers address board members with respect and dignity. He spat on a piece of paper containing the policy and ripped it up. He was warned to refrain from using the word "spit" again.

A little later, Dehne was removed after Hill overheard Dehne use the term "spit." Dehne claims he wasn't criticizing the policy, but instead was informing another person not to touch the paper because it had spit on it.

A televised argument ensued between Dehne and Hill before Dehne was removed and briefly incarcerated.

Dehne's lawyer, Martin Crowley, urged the appeals court to reinstate his lawsuit against the authority. In throwing out the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben had ruled that Dehne "was removed, after appropriate warning, for his disruptive, loud and obstreperous conduct."

In June 1999, then-Mayor Jeff Griffin removed Dehne from a Reno City Council meeting. The council was about to take action on an airport financing item, a matter Griffin had been cautioned from participating in by a state ethics board.

The mayor removed Dehne after Dehne publicly alleged that the mayor was violating ethics rules and should disqualify himself from overseeing the televised meeting.

"Somebody escort that clown out of here," the mayor said when ordering Dehne out.

"He called him a clown on public television," Dehne's attorney, Crowley, told the appeals court.

A federal judge had dismissed Dehne's case against the City Council, ruling that the First Amendment does not trump an orderly public hearing. Deputy City Attorney Creig Skau urged the appeals court Thursday not to reinstate the case, saying Dehne's ejection was reasonable considering his "disruptive comments."