Hurley Resident Says Councilman Violated Her Rights, and the ACLU Agrees - Maya Schubert/Kingston Wire
A Hurley resident is claiming that her First Amendment rights were violated by the removal of a campaign sign from her property by Town Councilman Peter Humphries.
The property owner, who in late October put out a sign for the town’s endorsed Democrats but taped over Humphries’ name with a cardboard placard for his challenger, Diana Kline, said Humphries’ confiscation of the sign suppressed her right to freedom of speech.
“I feel this whole situation and how you treated me was highly disrespectful, inconsiderate, and a violation of my First Amendment rights,” resident Linda Mokarry said during the public comment period of Thursday’s town board evening.
Humphries, defeated at the polls for another term on the town board, has admitted to taking the sign but defended the confiscation on the grounds that the town Democratic Party owned the sign. After the incident, however, Mokarry said she spoke with Ulster County Board of Elections Commissioner Ashley Torres, who said that residents have the right to a political message “of their chosen speech” under the First Amendment.
“The candidates who gave her that sign relinquished their ownership upon transfer to her, albeit in good faith that she would support his candidacy, but the home/lawn owner did not agree to that in any written formal capacity,” Torres told Kingston Wire in a later conversation.
Mokarry said she put the sign with the taped-over name out on Saturday, Oct. 21. The next day, while campaigning door-to-door, Town Supervisor Melinda McKnight, accompanied by Humphries, asked her about the sign. Mokarry cut short the interaction because she was preoccupied, but told the Wire she “had all intentions of removing” the sign, as she didn’t want to make McKnight uncomfortable. When she went back outside, however, the sign was gone.
Mokarry complained of the removal of the sign at the Oct. 24 public hearing on the 2024 town budget, but was told by the board to return to speak at November’s meeting, because the hearing only concerned the budget. The same evening, she said she received a text from McKnight reiterating Humphries’ defense.
“If someone alters a political sign, the candidates have the right to confiscate it,” McKnight wrote, according to Mokarry’s account. “If Peter had not taken it, I would have.”
Mokarry said she contacted the American Civil Liberties Union about the legality of the sign’s removal and received a response back that she read aloud at Thursday’s meeting.
Perry Grossman, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project wrote: “[Y]our alteration of the yard sign at issue — to express support for your three preferred candidates for office and disapproval of another candidate for office — is the kind of political speech at the core of the First Amendment. Absent some agreement that the yard at issue (1) was the property of the Town Democratic Party or Mr. Humphries; (2) that the sign could not be altered as it was; and (3) that the owners of the sign had a right of entry onto your property to retake possession without notice or consent by you, the removal of the sign at issue from your property raises serious concerns about suppression of speech.”
Mokarry said that she is considering legal action but doesn’t “want to start trouble.”
McKnight declined to comment on the matter.
In other town board news:
The council voted 5-0 to appoint Paul Economos full-time building inspector at an annual salary of $75,000. It voted 5-0 also set a pay rate for the position of deputy clerk, which has not yet been filled. The part-time job will pay $17.10 per hour. It also voted 5-0 to pay no more than $4,377 on speed humps for Joys Lane.