Miami Beach Mayor Withdraws Bill To Evict Theater for Screening No Other Land

Following intense national and local criticism from free speech advocates, the mayor of Miami Beach has withdrawn a proposal to terminate the lease and grants of an independent theater in retaliation for showing No Other Land, an Oscar-winning documentary about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Miami Herald reported today that during a “raucous” Miami Beach City Commission meeting, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner pulled a proposed resolution he introduced last week that would have terminated the city’s lease agreement and tens of thousands of dollars in grants with O Cinema, an independent theater that rents space from the city. 

Meiner filed the bill after O Cinema moved ahead with the screenings despite an official letter from Meiner stating that showing the documentary would be “normalizing hate and then disseminating antisemitism in a facility owned by the taxpayers of Miami Beach.”

However, Meiner pulled his bill after only one other commissioner supported it, and five other commissioners said they would vote against it. The Herald reports that “the vast majority of attendees opposed Meiner’s proposal.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida quickly jumped to O Cinema’s defense, and other state and national free speech groups condemned Meiner’s resolution as well.

“The commissioners need to choose—either support the mayor’s viewpoint discrimination or defend the First Amendment of the people they represent,” Stephanie Jablonsky, a senior program council at Freedom for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), wrote in a letter to the city of Miami Beach yesterday.

Over 600 filmmakers also sent a letter urging the city commission to reject the resolution.

The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil liberties group, applauded the failure of Meiner’s resolution.

“Public pressure works,” CAIR-Florida Executive Director Imam Abdullah Jaber said in a press release. “CAIR, CAIR-Florida, and the ACLU—among others—applied public pressure on Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner to drop his failed proposal to censor our cherished First Amendment right to freedom of speech, which protects artistic expression.”

Perhaps the Miami Beach city government shouldn’t be playing landlord for movie theaters in the first place, but if it is, it can’t discriminate on the basis of political viewpoint. That’s a basic First Amendment principle that any public official should understand as a prerequisite for holding office.

Unfortunately, many public officials are in dire need of remedial constitutional education. The Miami Herald noted that two of the people who called in to Wednesday’s hearing in support of Meiner were his South Florida colleagues, the mayors of Hialeah and Miami.

“We are completely in solidarity with you, Mayor Meiner, over your concerns over what is happening in a public theater,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said.

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