Court Hears Appeal of Ex-ACLU Officials

Two-thirds of the way through a prepared talk, speaker Linda Valentino broke from remarks on the abuses of police surveillance and abruptly asked a man in the audience: “Would you care to comment on that, Officer Long?”

Stunned, participants at the 1980 public conference turned toward the subject target of her gibe: Sgt. Richard T. Long, a Newport Beach police community relations officer who would later be branded a “spy” by organizers of the American Civil Liberties Union event.

Valentino’s query eventually led to the police officer’s departure from the conference--after what he described as the humiliation and intimidation of having been singled out and being the target of verbal abuse.

And on Friday, state appellate justices in Santa Ana were asked to decide whether that confrontation was a protected expression of free speech by angered ACLU members or a clear case of discrimination in excluding a police officer from a public meeting.

In oral arguments before the 4th District Court of Appeal, attorneys for Valentino, a former board member in the Southern California chapter of the organization, and former ACLU staff attorney Rees Lloyd, who also was at the 1980 meeting, implored the court to overturn the award made in Orange County Superior Court in 1987 in favor of Long. The appellate court did not rule on the matter. Long won a $20,000 judgment in the Superior Court trial, and the court had later ordered the ACLU of Southern California to pay Long about $72,000 in legal expenses. Last year, the group paid Long $35,000 to settle its portion of the claim, marking the first time that the champion of civil liberties had ever paid damages to settle a violation of rights claim against it. But Valentino and Lloyd, who as individuals were co-defendants in the suit, broke ranks with the ACLU and decided to appeal.

In court Friday, their attorneys painted the case as nothing less than a critical test of citizens’ right to stand up to Big Brother and express themselves.

“The fact that it happens to be a public meeting doesn’t mean that the government can sit there among us and record what we say and do,” argued Hugh Manes, the attorney for Lloyd. Manes maintained that Long “tried to sneak into” the publicly advertised meeting, perhaps in an attempt to “distort” participants’ comments in a report back to Newport Beach police. Manes also argued that the presence of unannounced police officers or other government officials at meetings, even public ones, amounts to government surveillance and could have a “chilling effect” on open discussion.

But his argument drew open skepticism from Associate Justice Thomas F. Crosby Jr. Crosby suggested that by Manes’ reasoning, police officers could be barred from a host of public places or meetings. “How’s a policeman supposed to know what public meetings he can go to?” Crosby said.

In response to the claim that the defendants were merely exercising their rights to free speech, Crosby said later: “You didn’t say” to Long that “ ‘you’re a lousy scumbag policeman and I hate all of you’; you said, ‘Get out of the meeting.’ ”

Long has acknowledged that he was acting in an official capacity, on instructions from the police chief and with approval for overtime pay, when he attended the ACLU Legislative Conference on Oct. 11, 1980, in Newport Beach. He paid a fee, but he did not sign the conference register.

Long, who was wearing street clothes, took about 10 pages of notes and tape-recorded portions of the discussions throughout the day, according to testimony at the trial. He said that the reason he attended and was recording the sessions was that he was trying to get a better idea of the community’s concerns about law enforcement.

The conference, which came shortly after a public outcry over police spying in Los Angeles and elsewhere, became heated after Valentino made Long’s presence known to the group. Several participants demanded to know what the officer was doing at the conference. After a verbal confrontation with Lloyd, Long left.

ACLU officials maintain that although they loudly voiced their displeasure about the officer’s presence, he was never explicitly ordered to leave or forcibly removed the meeting.

But Long testified at the Superior Court trial: “It was just awful. These people are shouting things at you. You got people sticking their finger in your face. You got accusations. . . . I was incensed by what they’d done, and I mean, I had this vision of my career crashing and burning.

“I was embarrassed. I was humiliated by these people. You got all these people sitting there looking at you like you done something wrong. . . . I wanted out of there. I wanted to go home.”

Long’s attorney, Jeffrey M. Epstein, argued in court Friday that the ACLU members at the conference were in effect engaged in “a conspiracy . . . to try and embarrass and drive Richard Long from there.”

In the 1987 trial verdict, Lloyd was held liable for about $46,000 in damages to Long, and Valentino for $4,100. Valentino said that if the verdict is upheld, the ACLU will pay her share of the damages. But the money is not the issue, Valentino said.

“It’s the principle,” she said after Friday’s arguments were heard. “If the court upholds this verdict, it’s the first time someone has been held liable for civil damages for exercising protected speech to a government official.”