SAN JOSE, Calif. — Los Gatos Town Council’s censure of a planning commissioner for using “divisive” language caught the attention of First Amendment advocates who say the council’s disciplinary process violated the commissioner’s constitutional rights and was “plain and simple, illegal.”
The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter to the town council March 1, urging them to revoke Commissioner Kylie Clark’s censure — a formal disapproval of her comments that she was given after calling out the “rich, white, anti-housing men” in Los Gatos.
“That’s just pure and utter censorship. They’re saying, ‘We don’t like this speech, and that’s why we’re going to discipline it,’ and that’s exactly what you can’t do,” said Shilpi Agarwal, legal director of the ACLU of Northern California.
