[PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-11421 ____________________

JAMES ERIC MCDONOUGH, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus CARLOS GARCIA, GARLAND WRIGHT, individually, CITY OF HOMESTEAD, a political subdivision of the State of Florida,

Defendants-Appellees. USCA11 Case: 22-11421 Document: 73-1 Date Filed: 09/16/2024 Page: 2 of 32

2 Opinion of the Court 22-11421

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-21986-FAM ____________________

Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, WILSON, JORDAN, ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, BRANCH, GRANT, LUCK, LAGOA, BRASHER, and ABUDU, Circuit Judges. GRANT, Circuit Judge, delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, WILSON, JORDAN, ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, BRANCH, LUCK, LAGOA, BRASHER, and ABUDU, Circuit Judges, joined. ABUDU, Circuit Judge, filed a concurring opinion.

GRANT, Circuit Judge: James McDonough’s trip to the Homestead city council meeting started with a comment and ended with his expulsion. When he returned for the next month’s meeting, he learned he had been banned from City Hall. McDonough ended up with a disor- derly conduct arrest, as well as a few other charges. He sued, chal- lenging, among other things, his ban from City Hall. When con- sidering that challenge, the first question this Court asked was what kind of public forum the city council meeting was. The second was what legal standard applies in that forum. USCA11 Case: 22-11421 Document: 73-1 Date Filed: 09/16/2024 Page: 3 of 32

22-11421 Opinion of the Court 3

These questions seemed simple; they did not turn out to be. Instead, they highlighted an unresolved knot in our precedents that could only be untangled with en banc review. While the Supreme Court’s public forum framework has evolved over the last forty years, our own precedents have failed to keep pace. We now take the opportunity to get our house in order, aligning our public fo- rum doctrine with the Court’s latest cases. Because the city council meeting here limits participants’ speech to a specific subject mat- ter—topics “pertinent to the City”—these meetings are limited public forums, where regulations must be reasonable and view- point neutral. I. We include here only the facts necessary to answer the legal questions before the en banc Court. The City of Homestead, Flor- ida holds monthly city council meetings at its city hall. These meet- ings are open to the general public, and the council invites speeches of up to three minutes at a time on any matters “pertinent to the City” during the public comment portion of each session. McDonough, a self-styled citizen activist, is a regular. After one of his comments was perceived as a threat, he was removed from the July 2016 meeting. A month later, planning to attend the August meeting, McDonough arrived at City Hall. This time,