City of Newburyport agrees to pay parents group $10K after mayor removes their fliers from public bulletin boards

The city of Newburyport, MA has agreed to pay $10,000 to parent group Citizens for Responsible Education in the wake of the mayor’s removal of the group’s flyers from public bulletin boards last October.

Below is a copy of the flyer that the Newburyport mayor took down:

As part of the settlement, the statement below is required to run on the Newburyport Facebook page for the fourteen days following the settlement:

“The city of Newburyport and the mayor’s office value the First Amendment guarantee of free speech,” the statement reads. “The city acknowledges that citizens retain the right to express themselves in a public forum, within the confines of the scope of the First Amendment, as interpreted by our state and federal courts. The city may regulate postings on a municipal bulletin board which is open to the public, but acknowledges that postings may not be censored based on their content or the viewpoints expressed.”

Newburyport News

The Mayor’s chief of staff made it clear that the statement was not an admission of wrongdoing on the city’s part.

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