All Is Silent at City Hall.

This article describes the case filed by a newspaper, "The Business Journal," after George McKelvey, mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, banned city employees from speaking with any reporter of the magazine. In a lawsuit brought before a U.S. District Court, the lawyers of the newspaper argued that the ban is based on nothing more than the mayor's personal animus and constitutes retaliation against us for exercising our First Amendment rights. Such retaliation is illegal, the pleadings claimed, according to Section 1983 of the Civil Rights statute, enacted in 1871, that prohibits governmental entities from depriving citizens of their constitutional rights. This situation began in August 2001 when the newspaper, a locally owned publication with a circulation of 10,000, criticized the mayor for calling 911 to report a possible sniper hiding on a grassy knoll. Multiple sources confirmed for us that when the mayor called the city's emergency dispatch center he knew the suspicious character was, in fact, a political activist armed with a pair of opera glasses, who was hiding near a closed-to-the-public restaurant, where the mayor was attending a private luncheon. In the case filed against the mayor, in May, U.S. District Court Judge Peter C. Economus refused newspaper's request that a preliminary injunction be ordered against the mayor, and he dismissed the case.