The New York Civil Liberties Union is calling out the Kingston Common Council, accusing lawmakers of violating the First Amendment with its recent ban of signs at its meetings.

In a letter to city officials, NYCLU, an affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the recent decision by Common Council President Andrea Shaut to ban signs from council chambers an unconstitutional infringement of the First Amendment rights of protestors. At a meeting earlier this month, several protestors were barred from entering City Hall unless they cardboard effigies of victims of police violence and placards denouncing a plan to buy an armored car for city police outside.

The sign ban was enacted immediately prior to the Aug. 3 Common Council meeting, where lawmakers voted on a proposal to use a $100,000 Homeland Security grant to pay for an armored rescue vehicle for use by the joint City of Kingston/Town of Ulster Emergency Services Unit.

Shaut later said that she had directed City Clerk Elisa Tinti, wife of KPD Chief Egidio Tinti, to seek an advisory opinion on the presence of signs at public meetings from the New York Conference of Mayors. That directive, she said, came after unnamed city employees expressed safety concerns after supporters of the activist coalition Wednesday Walk for Black Lives turned out at a July meeting of the council’s Finance Committee carrying signs and effigies.

Shaut later said her decision to ban signs was based on a Conference of Mayors advisory opinion that said state Open Meetings Law barred attendees at public meetings from carrying anything that could block others view of the proceedings or — in the case of signs mounted on sticks — be used as a weapon.

“Once I found out it was a law, I had to enforce it,” said Shaut earlier this month. “Unfortunately I didn’t find out about it until [Aug. 3] and there was no advance notice, but that is going to be what we will enforce from now on.”

When members of the Wednesday Walk for Black Lives turned out again at the Aug. 3 meeting, they were met at the entrance to City Hall by posters announcing the sign ban — and a contingent of Kingston police and Chief Tinti, who told them they would not be allowed to enter with their placards. A short confrontation ensued in the entranceway, during which the activists demanded to know who had instituted the policy and whether they would be arrested for violating it. Eventually, members of the coalition stacked their signs outside the doors and proceeded to council chambers, where a few used magic markers and sheets of paper to make new signs.

Coalition members returned to City Hall on Aug. 11 to protest a plan to install a network of surveillance cameras around the city and were again met by a KPD contingent charged with enforcing the sign ban.

In a letter addressed to the Common Council and top city attorney Kevin Bryant, NYCLU senior staff attorney Beth Haroules wrote that the sign ban “runs counter to sound public policy, and also violates fundamental First Amendment principles.” Haroules added that the timing of the sign ban, which was enacted the day of armored vehicle vote, raises the question of whether city officials intended to suppress expression of a particular point of view.

In the four-page letter annotated with legal opinions, Haroules wrote that while state law allows banning from public meetings signs that are disruptive, obscene or block the public’s ability to view proceedings, a blanket ban on all signs was an unconstitutional infringement on the right to free speech and political expression.

“The very purpose of an open, public government meeting is to allow the public to understand, inform, petition and influence its government,” Haroules wrote. “In light of this purpose, it is unreasonable to prohibit all signs, including reasonably-sized signs that would not disrupt the meeting.”

In statement released Wednesday, the Wednesday Walk for Black Lives Coalition wrote that the NYCLU opinion vindicated their belief that the sign ban was arbitrary and intended to suppress a particular viewpoint. The statement also took issue with the fact that city police were deployed to the meeting to prevent coalition members from fully expressing their opposition to the purchase of a police vehicle.

“One of the most troubling aspects of the sign ban was not only that it was drafted at the last minute with no public notice, but also that it was enforced by the police department which was proposing the acquisition,” the statement reads. “The agency responsible for enforcing laws in the city enforced an illegal and unconstitutional policy, from which it directly benefited.”

Shaut was unavailable for comment on Wednesday.