STAMFORD – City Rep. Anabel Figueroa should be censured for antisemitic remarks used to describe her opponent in August’s Democratic primary, but not removed from the Board of Representatives, attorneys concluded in a report released Thursday.
The board hired attorneys Steven Mednick and Richard Roberts in October “to document what happened” and counsel city representatives “on the legally enforceable disciplinary tools available to expose and condemn” Figueroa’s statements about Jonathan Jacobson, who unseated her in state House District 148.
The best tool is censure, not removal, Mednick and Roberts wrote in the 94-page report.
“Comments uttered by Representative Figueroa are worthy of repudiation and disciplinary action by the Board of Representatives,” the report concludes. “Speakers who utter words of bias or hatred, or words that perpetuate stereotypes, need to be called out.” The report presses for “a long overdue denunciation.”
Figueroa’s statements, however, “would not constitute actionable hate speech,” the attorneys concluded, and would be protected under the free speech clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“It is highly unlikely that Representative Figueroa’s statements, albeit reprehensible, are of such a specific and threatening nature so as to fall outside First Amendment protections,” the report concludes.
Two other cases that cited city representatives for offensive speech, one in 2019 and the other last year, were resolved with censures, so there is precedent for that remedy, wrote Mednick and Roberts, who have advised legislative bodies in municipalities throughout Connecticut.
Several times in the report they noted the state of Democratic politics in Stamford.
Mednick and Roberts advised the Stamford Charter Revision Commission two years ago and said that, like then, they encountered “a highly stratified and competitive political environment” while compiling the Figueroa report.
They were concerned that factions of Democrats “might seek political advantage” in the Figueroa matter, “which, in turn, might stand in the way of an effective repudiation of the antisemitic statements that are at issue here,” they wrote.
The Board of Representatives will take up the report, and possibly take action, at a special meeting scheduled for Feb. 5.
‘Not for the faint of heart’
During their interviews, an unnamed city representative, characterized in the report as a “member of the leadership” of the Board of Representatives, stated that a vote against removing Figueroa “could be used in the 2025 campaign against those members who did so, as evidence of their failure to take appropriate action in the face of Representative Figueroa’s remarks,” Mednick and Roberts wrote.
Democratic Mayor Caroline Simmons, all members of the Board of Representatives, and members of other Stamford boards are up for reelection in November.
The attorneys wrote in the report that they believe “that the advice we provide must recognize the chasm that exists and try to avoid turning what should be a civil and dispassionate discussion about appropriate disciplinary action to address antisemitic statements into just one more notch in the belt for one side or the other that seeks political advantage.”
A removal proceeding “should not be used as a political ruse designed to force members of the body to cast a vote that could be held against them in the next election cycle,” the report states.
“Of course, we would like to believe that most representatives are not viewing this process in strictly political terms. However, we do recognize that, in an impulsive political environment, forcing a vote on removal might create the impression that those against removal were insensitive to antisemitic remarks,” it states. “Members of an elected body should only be removed for good cause and serious offense, not for political maneuvering.”
Stamford politics “is not for the faint of heart,” they wrote.
Their focus was to recommend “a condemnation or repudiation that is legally sustainable,” the attorneys wrote. Unlike removal from public office, a censure would stand up to a possible First Amendment challenge, they concluded.
Hate speech protected
Under the city charter, the Board of Representatives may remove a colleague if 30 of the 40 members vote to do so. The question, according to the report, “is whether Representative Figueroa’s exercise of speech, including the odious words used, could be … sustained as grounds for removal from office.”
After reviewing case law, the attorneys came to the opinion that Figueroa’s statements would be protected under the First Amendment, and attempting to remove her would open the city to a retaliation claim in court.
“In our opinion, Representative Figueroa’s statements would not constitute actionable ‘hate speech,’ ‘true threats,’ ‘fighting words,’ or any other form of speech which would take such statements outside of First Amendment protections,” the report reads.
Political speech receives the highest form of protection under the First Amendment, but hate speech also can be protected, according to the report. The “proudest boast” of American free speech rights “is that we protect the freedom to express the thought that we hate,” the report reads.
For speech to be beyond First Amendment protection it must be “a direct, specific, and imminent threat to a person or group of persons.”
Figueroa’s statements, “although deplorable, are not threatening in nature and, moreover, consistently seem to relate to matters of public concern,” such as “her perception of a person’s ability to represent her constituency.”
Figueroa said during the Democratic primary that Jacobson could not represent her largely Hispanic district because he is Jewish.
The report reiterates some of Figueroa’s widely quoted comments:
- “The Hispanic vote is going to determine on August 13th who will win to represent or who will continue to represent you. We cannot permit a person who is of Jewish origin, of Jewish origin, to represent our community. It’s impossible.”
- Jacobson “is a man that comes from the Jewish community, a community that is obviously starting to gain a lot of power in Stamford and it starts with the mayor.”
- “I think if this person were running to represent people from their community or if they were mixed, I think I would respect it. But in my community, we don’t have people like him, from his community.”
Words, not beliefs, matter
Members of the Board of Representatives, the Stamford Democratic City Committee, Simmons and others called for Figueroa to step down.
Figueroa did, at first, but then pulled back her resignation. The El Salvador native said she wanted to underscore the need for Hispanic representation in government, not denigrate Jewish people, and that Democrat leaders have long targeted her because she does not toe the party line.
None of that is a factor, the report concludes.
“Does this mean the person uttering the words is antisemitic? Who can know for sure?” it reads. “However … the speaker’s beliefs do not matter because the words, on their own, have resonance.”
According to the report, Jacobson, Figueroa’s opponent in the August primary, directed Mednick and Roberts to a series of rulings by the Stamford Board of Ethics, including ones involving Figueroa. Jacobson and Figueroa have a contentious relationship rooted in their years serving together on the Stamford Board of Representatives. After defeating Figueroa in the primary, Jacobson now is Stamford’s District 148 representative in the Connecticut House.
Jacobson, an attorney, told Mednick and Roberts that the ethics cases might provide “an alternative basis” for removing Figueroa, the report states. But the attorneys found the ethics board rulings contradictory, writing that they ignore “precedent and consistency of analysis.”
Based on their brief review, “we believe that the Board of Representatives might want to ask the legal department to review ethics cases to determine whether the Board of Ethics is serving its legal functions under the city charter within the letter of the law,” the attorneys wrote.
At the request of members of the Board of Representatives, the attorneys reviewed two previous cases in which city legislators were censured.
‘Free to say what we feel’
In 2019 the board voted to censure then-city Rep. Marion McGarry for derogatory Facebook posts directed at Muslims, citing “conduct detrimental to the public’s trust and confidence in the Stamford Board of Representatives.”
McGarry’s posts included photos of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center along with a photo of Muslim Americans being sworn in as members of Congress.
One comment read, “How quick we forget. This is a slap in the face to all that gave their life on 9/11.” Another comment read, “Really, America. Seriously, are we that stupid?”
The report states that Jacobson was a principal sponsor of the resolution to censure McGarry.
It quotes Jacobson’s remarks from the minutes of a March 12, 2019 Board of Representatives meeting on the censure: “It is not a motion to remove from office or … silence or suppress. We are all free to say what we feel, as is our right under the First Amendment. But when those statements contradict the values of our elective body, the rest of us have the exact same First Amendment right to condemn those statements …. The way I propose that we do so is through censure.”
Jacobson made a persuasive case for censuring McGarry, the report states, even as he has called for Figueroa to resign.
“Under the law, the comments of Representative Figueroa are entitled to the same First Amendment analysis that Mr. Jacobson embraced during the McGarry censure,” the report reads.
The ‘ruling pigs’ censure
The report also cites last year’s censure of city Rep. Carl Weinberg, who charged some of his colleagues who also sit on the Democratic City Committee with “double-dipping” by voting for their own nominations, which was allowed under party rules.
Weinberg blamed those colleagues for the large number of vacancies on volunteer boards and the number of people serving beyond their expired terms.
In a published opinion piece, Weinberg likened his colleagues to the “ruling pigs” in the George Orwell novel “Animal Farm.” The Board of Representatives voted to censure Weinberg, saying he had a pattern of attacking fellow representatives during meetings;
impugning the actions and motives of fellow members; disrupting board business; posting his attacks on social media; accusing colleagues of inventing facts; and “lacing his attacks with partial and outright misinformation.”
By focusing on the word “pig,” which “has long been associated with dirt and low nature,” Weinberg “went beyond the bounds of appropriate legislative behavior,” the report reads.
“While Representative Weinberg’s statements did not resort to an explicit characterization based on race, religion, class, creed, or any other assumptions or beliefs about a person or group of people, his comments and other offending actions fell squarely into the realm of the censure process, no more or no less than the other cases” involving McGarry and Figueroa, the report concludes.
‘A sordid episode’
A censure is a serious matter, and there are few instances of them in Connecticut, according to the report, but it concludes by proposing a resolution to censure Figueroa “for her antisemitic statements.”
The attorneys wrote that they “have represented charter commissions throughout the state and have rarely observed the level of contention and vituperation” observed during the 2023 charter revision proceedings in Stamford.
Mednick and Roberts wrote that, as Stamford begins “the 2025 municipal election year, we recognize that the (political factions) … will try to find advantage on political issues as they arise. … It is our hope that this report … will provide the (Board of Representatives) with the foundation for a sober discussion of a sordid episode that should be treated seriously and effectively.”
Figueroa has served Stamford’s District 8 on the Board of Representatives for 24 years. She was a 12-year member of the Stamford Democratic City Committee until the party voted her out in September. Figueroa represented state House of Representatives District 148 after winning a special election in 2023, losing the seat to Jacobson in November.
The report repeats several apologies issued by Figueroa, including one published by CT News Junkie in August: “There is almost no Latino representation in Hartford, and I am currently the only Latina state representative in southern Connecticut. There is a strong Latino community in the 148th District, and I will ensure their voice is at the table and never leave it. This has nothing to do with religion, and as a bilingual speaker, I misspoke when describing my opponent’s background.”
—
STAMFORD-REPORT-AND-OPINION.HR_