The city of Westminster is suing two of its councilmembers for disrupting meetings and impairing government business.
The city’s lawsuit argues their behavior constitutes a misdemeanor.
The city is seeking a court order, including a temporary restraining order, that would legally require councilmembers Amy Phan West and NamQuan Nguyen to stop speaking at council meetings “when they are not recognized by the mayor as having the floor.”
Westminster City Attorney Christian Bettenhausen said at a council meeting in October that the city might try to seek fines from Phan West and Nguyen if they violate a court order if a judge agrees to one in the future.
In a complaint filed to the Orange County Superior Court on Nov. 27, attorneys for the city of Westminster allege that Phan West and Nguyen have “persistently interrupted” City Council meetings by repeatedly cutting off their colleagues out of turn and sometimes engaging in rude or offensive speech. The city alleges that such behavior amounts to a misdemeanor, according to Westminster Municipal Code and California Penal Code.
Phan West, NamQuan Nguyen and City Manager Christine Cordon did not respond to requests to comment on the lawsuit. Mayor Chi Charlie Nguyen said he was unavailable.
A case management conference – a meeting where the judge and parties in a case meet and confer about how to proceed – is scheduled for May 6.
This suit is the latest escalation in a contentious year between Phan West and NamQuan Nguyen and their council colleagues.
In June, the divided council voted 3-1 to proceed with a motion to censure Phan West, with Nguyen opposed and Phan West abstaining. Colleagues accused Phan West of 20 misdeeds, ranging from frequently texting while on the dais to accusing city officials of taking bribes in a live video on Instagram.
After the council formally censured her in August, Phan West responded with motions to censure Mayor Nguyen and Councilmember Kimberly Ho. Those motions failed. Phan West an NamQuan Nguyen supported them; the rest of the council did not.
Instead, Mayor Nguyen responded with proposals for new rules about council conduct that were intended to curtail crosstalk at the dais and cut down on discussion time after a handful of marathon council meetings over the summer kept city staff at work past dawn the next day.
Ultimately, the council voted 3-2, with Phan West and NamQuan Nguyen opposed, to amend the way councilmembers can bring agenda items to discussion and to limit how long any member can speak on an item without receiving majority approval to continue.
Mayor Nguyen, Ho and Councilmember Carlos Manzo voted to hire outside counsel to pursue litigation against their colleagues during a closed session meeting on Oct. 23. The city attorney immediately reported the closed-session action item to the public, describing the nature of the would-be litigation on the record. He said Mayor Nguyen proposed the idea of litigation and that Phan West and NamQuan Nguyen skipped the closed session vote even though they had been briefed on the action item.
Phan West said she told city staff ahead of the Oct. 23 meeting that she would not attend the closed session “because what the mayor requested is unconstitutional, violating my First Amendment and it’s illegal.” She and NamQuan Nguyen have missed a series of closed-session meetings this year. Those meetings occur just before the public council meetings.
NamQuan Nguyen did not comment when the city attorney read the item to the public on Oct. 23, but Mayor Nguyen responded to Phan West from the dais.
“We don’t have to do this if we don’t have their chaos in our City Council meetings, but, unfortunately, we have to proceed this way,” he said.
The city says in its lawsuit that the new rules have been ineffectual, with three of six meetings leading up to the date of the complaint having gone on for more than 10 hours.
“To curb disruptions and more efficiently handle the public’s business, the City Council has amended its decorum and related policies; to date, without much success,” city attorneys wrote in their complaint. The law firm of Colantuono, Highsmith & Whatley, PC is representing the city in the suit.
Phan West and NamQuan Nguyen joined the council in 2022.
Ho did not seek reelection this fall, and newcomer Mark Nguyen won the recent election to the District 3 seat. Nguyen has said he would focus on bringing “a sense of teamwork and calmness back to the dais.”
Wednesday, Dec. 11, will be Ho’s last meeting and Mark Nguyen will be sworn in along with Manzo, who won reelection to his District 2 seat.
In the complaint, the city describes council meetings as having recently become “dysfunctional and raucous, with Defendants Amy Phan West and NamQuan Nguyen repeatedly disrupting meetings from the dais.”
The city says the two councilmembers have failed to adhere to the council’s discussion protocols on “dozens of recent occasions.” But the complaint only enumerates several examples of them interrupting their colleagues at the dais at a series of meetings from August through October.
“The city acknowledges that each defendant councilmember has the right to speak regarding the issues at hand and even engage in speech that others may find offensive or rude and the city seeks no relief by this complaint that does not respect those rights,” the suit says. “However, defendants must abide by the rules of decorum and respect the mayor’s authority to determine who has the floor, just as other members of the City Council and members of the public who participate in City Council meetings — lest they degenerate into shouting matches; generating heat, but not light.”
Phan West has previously described the council majority’s efforts to amend council protocols as dictatorial and a way to silence her and the minority opinion she says she represents.
Mayor Nguyen has defended the protocol changes as “doing what needs to be done in order to get the city moving forward.”
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