Still, while sparring with pro-Palestinian speakers during City Commission meetings, Meiner has emphasized that the city is “nonpartisan” and stated that his resolution doesn’t mention any country.

“This is a nonpartisan government,” Meiner said in March as he cut off a speaker who referred to Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide. “I’m not going to sit here and allow you to make accusations about the Israeli government.”

The mayor made similar remarks at a commission meeting last week.

“You did it again. You just can’t help yourself,” he told a speaker who opposed the protest restrictions and called for an end to “the genocide against the Palestinians.”

“This is a nonpartisan commission,” Meiner said.

Simon, the Florida ACLU director, said the city is within its rights to support Israel and foster a relationship with the country. But “allowing people to exercise their First Amendment right does not endanger the city from fulfilling that mission,” he said.

Until the city passes a new law detailing time, place and manner restrictions on protests, Simon said a legal challenge is unlikely. Still, he said, the city’s actions are concerning. In March, pro-Palestinian protesters outside the Aspen Ideas climate conference at the Miami Beach Convention Center were directed to a barricaded “free speech zone” in nearby Pride Park.

“That can’t be the new normal in a country that still has the First Amendment,” Simon said.

A police spokesperson said at the time that a “security zone” had been established around the Convention Center campus because high-level government officials were attending the conference. The free speech zone was set up within the security zone so that protesters could “exercise their First Amendment right to protest, demonstrate, or leaflet,” the spokesperson said.

The handling of pro-Palestinian protests has become a contentious topic in the city. Suarez blasted Police Chief Wayne Jones at the March meeting for providing what the commissioner said was insufficient protection to congregants at the Temple Emanu-El protest. Suarez suggested the chief, who is Black, would have handled the event differently if it were a “KKK rally” — a remark that Miami Beach police union president Bobby Hernandez said was “uncalled for and political grandstanding at its worst” in a March 18 email to union members.

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