The city of San Diego has agreed to pay $15,000 to settle a lawsuit accusing elected officials of denying citizens their right to free speech during public meetings. The legal complaint was filed by an organization represented by attorney Cory Briggs, who for years has been suing cities and other public entities alleging they failed to comply with public records and free-speech rules. According to a court order issued last week, the city agreed to pay $15,000 to the Project for Open Government to resolve complaints against Council President Sean Elo-Rivera and Councilmembers Jennifer Campbell and Marni von Wilpert. The lawsuit accused the elected officials of preventing citizens from expressing their grievances during public meetings of the City Council just ahead of the November 2022 election. “Plaintiff, its members and other members of the public have been injured as a result of (the city’s) violations of the free-speech and government-petitioning rights of the public,” the San Diego Superior Court lawsuit said. “Among other things, members of the public are unable to speak freely to members of (the) city council and its committees and are thereby unable to adequately instruct their representatives and to petition those representatives to redress the public’s grievances,” it added. None of the three City Council members who were named in the initial complaint from the Project for Open Government responded to requests for comment on the $15,000 settlement. The city attorney’s office issued a statement saying that it would have cost more to fight. “This was a business decision because continued litigation would have been far more expensive,” a spokesperson for City Attorney Mara Elliott said by email. The agreement is one of more than a dozen claims Briggs has made to end lawsuits against the city of San Diego and other local public agencies in disputes over public records and practices. Most notably, Briggs prevailed in a civil suit he filed on behalf of client Arturo Castañares against the city of Chula Vista more than three years ago. City officials refused to release any of the video footage collected by its police drones, insisting the material was investigatory. Despite repeated legal setbacks, Chula Vista officials persisted in their litigation. Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court refused to grant an appeal. The city and Briggs are still fighting over which specific footage is subject to public release. In the latest case, the Project for Open Government accused Campbell, Elo-Rivera and von Wilpert of violating the free-speech rights of former state Assemblymember Lori Saldaña when she addressed them at council and committee meetings. More specifically, von Wilpert was accused of interrupting Saldaña as she criticized Campbell in the run-up to her November 2022 re-election, and Elo-Rivera was accused of chastising Saldaña for registering concerns about a city-sponsored measure on the ballot that month. “Disallowing public comments related to a pending ballot measure put to the voters — especially one put to them by the council — is illegal,” Briggs wrote to the city. The $15,000 that city officials agreed to pay to settle the alleged violations of the Ralph M. Brown Act, the state law that governs public meetings, is only the latest payment by San Diego taxpayers for failing to follow the open-meetings and open-records laws. In less than two years, the city of San Diego paid more than $240,000 in legal settlements for failing to produce public records requested by clients of Briggs and other members of the public, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in 2022. Briggs challenged Elliott for re-election in 2020 but lost by more than 30 percentage points.