The Jacksonville Jaguar's Saturday night playoff victory was not without controversy outside the stadium.
A swastika and a cross were projected on the CSX building downtown, the latest message in a series of white supremacist provocations displayed on local structures during high-profile football games.
Currently, local ordinance lacks a mechanism to impose criminal penalties on responsible parties. But one Jacksonville City Council member says change is coming.
District 13 Republican Rory Diamond says he will sponsor legislation that would impose penalties on parties responsible for messages, including the swastika and the cross projected Saturday night, and similar messages that marred last year's Florida-Georgia football game held in Jacksonville.
"Working on this bill right now and anticipate filing this week. Other FL cities have protected private property rights in this way and simultaneously stopped messages of hate. Look forward to discussing the bill with my colleagues on Council who I'm sure are similarly disgusted," Diamond tweeted Monday.
Asked if he anticipated any objections on the grounds of freedom of speech, Diamond expressed little concern.
"There is no First Amendment right to use someone else's private property to display any message, anti-semitic or otherwise," Diamond told Florida Politics. "Rather, you have a private property right of quiet enjoyment and being free of nuisances."
The legislation would remedy an apparent gap in local ordinance that has, at least up until now, allowed people to project hate speech with legal impunity.
"At this time, the Sheriff's Office has not identified any crimes having been committed; the comments displayed do not include any type of threat and are protected by the First Amendment," Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Public Information Officer T.N. Dash said in an email to CNN after the incident last October. "We will continue to monitor any reports of this nature to determine if they rise to level of a criminal nature."
CSX offered a statement condemning the messages displayed on its building.
"The increased acts of antisemitism in Jacksonville are unacceptable. They are an appalling display of intolerance, which sows hatred and undermines our greatest strength — our diversity," CSX said in a statement to Action News Jax.
While the lack of a local enforcement mechanism has thus far been a sticking point in stopping this activity, new legislation may finally offer recourse to city leaders increasingly frustrated by this troubling trend.
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