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Jacksonville City Council rejects hate crime bill

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The Jacksonville City Council has rejected a bill that would have imposed harsher penalties for activities such as littering, noise pollution and light projections when used to convey hate speech, such as someone dropping leaflets on driveways to spread messages threatening people based on their race or religion.

The council voted 12-7 against the bill introduced by Councilman Jimmy Peluso, which would have imposed a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $10,000 fine per incident.

Peluso said that if someone were to scatter threatening leaflets in driveways, as happened in Mandarin and Murray Hill, “that piece of literature, if you scatter it in 20 people's homes, could bankrupt someone” as the fines pile up.

“It will make them think, and that's the purpose,” he said. “We want them to feel like something is really being done.”

As City Council committees debated the bill last week, opponents said the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office could already use state laws to crack down on such incidents. Opponents also questioned whether such laws would have any impact on people seeking to spread hateful messages.

“It is a matter of the heart and there is no legislation that can change anyone’s heart,” Councilman Terrance Freeman said in the council’s Rules Committee.

Council member Chris Miller said it would be better to focus on identifying policy programs the city council could support to address the “root causes” and also persuade people who hear of threats from individuals to report them to authorities.

“Can we constructively focus on the things where it makes a difference, and can we be fairly confident that we can minimize such occurrences in the future,” Miller said.

The vote came two weeks before the anniversary of the racist attack on a Dollar General store on Kings Road, in which a white gunman from Clay County traveled to a predominantly black neighborhood to kill black people. Three black residents were shot and killed in the store on August 26. The gunman then committed suicide.

Over the past two years, anti-Semitic messages such as swastikas have been projected with high-powered lights onto the sides of football stadiums and onto downtown police watchtowers. In Jacksonville and a number of other Florida cities, groups have thrown leaflets containing anti-Semitic language onto driveways.

In January 2023, the City Council passed a bill by a vote of 18 to 1 banning light projections on buildings without the owner's permission. The penalty is a $2,000 fine and up to 60 days in jail. This bill did not mention the anti-Semitic messages, so the bill would be “content neutral” and make all projections without permission illegal.

At Tuesday's council meeting, Councilman Michael Boylan, who sponsored the bill, said the changes to Peluso's original bill made it clear that the city was not trying to restrict First Amendment rights. He said a judge would decide whether the content of a message crossed the line by threatening a group of people in connection with another crime.

“I believe that we have a responsibility as elected leaders of this community to stand up against hate speech,” Boylan said. “We all need to tolerate hate speech as an individual right, but not when it specifically endangers other citizens.”

The bill would have imposed tougher penalties for already illegal behavior such as littering, noise pollution and light projections if the primary reason for doing so was the “expression of hostility, animosity or malice” toward people based on their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age or disability.

“This law will only be enforced when a crime has been committed, and many of these crimes would not be committed if there was not hatred in a person's heart,” said Councilman Matt Carlucci, a sponsor of the law.

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“We still see people saying and doing hateful things all the time,” said City Councilor Rahman Johnson. “This is an opportunity for us to give something biting.”

Voting against the bill on Tuesday were Randy White, Kevin Carrico, Ken Amaro, Raul Arias, Joe Carlucci, Rory Diamond, Nick Howland, Mike Gay, Will Lahnen, Ron Salem, Freeman and Miller.

Voting for the bill were Tyrona Clark-Murray, Ju'Coby Pittman, Reggie Gaffney, Jr., Matt Carlucci, Johnson, Peluso and Boylan.

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