The City Council in Bellevue, in the Seattle area, voted 6-1 on Tuesday night to approve a measure banning targeted protests outside private residences after a series of such demonstrations outside the home of Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) over his support for Israel.
Ordinance 6917 makes it a gross misdemeanor for three or more people to protest outside private homes. A source familiar with the measure told JNS that it was designed to address protests like those outside the congressman’s home.
Smith faces a primary challenge from a socialist, former member of the Seattle City Council, Kshama Sawant, who has campaigned on ending what she calls the “genocide in Gaza” and opposing military aid to Israel.
Sawant’s group, Workers Strike Back, has organized protests outside Smith’s Bellevue residence. Sawant did not attend the meeting on Tuesday.
Naren Briar, the only council member to vote against the ordinance, was endorsed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations when she ran for the seat in 2025.
During the vote, Briar said she has been stalked and had protesters outside her home but that she opposed the measure, because it was “too broad” and might infringe on people’s rights.
Other council members shared their fears about being intimidated and harassed in their homes.
Several speakers during the meeting’s public comments portion defended the ordinance and said demonstrations are intimidating.
“I have witnessed the mobs that come up to his house,” one person told the council. “They intimidate the neighborhood. They wake you up in the middle of the night with bullhorns. I don’t think any of that is reasonable political discourse.”
The speaker described speaking to protesters, who threatened him, he said..
“I think anybody who believes that this is just a free speech issue might have a different feeling if it was their house that was being targeted,” he told the council.
Opponents, some wearing keffiyehs and others holding up signs, argued that the ordinance violated First Amendment protections and was drafted so broadly that it would criminalize peaceful assembly.
“The Seattle Democratic Socialists of America and the East Side Branch urge the Bellevue City Council to reject Ordinance 6917,” one woman, identified as Nadine, told the council.
“Political speech is especially protected under the First Amendment, and restrictions on it must withstand the highest level of scrutiny,” she said.
Another woman, Carla, ignored repeated warnings from Bellevue Mayor Mo Malakoutian after she violated council meeting rules during her testimony opposing the ordinance.
Bellevue Police Department officers escorted her back to her seat. She was permitted to remain in the room.
Joseph Ostheller, an organizer with Seattle Against War, which has also participated in protests outside Smith’s home, told the council that the ordinance appeared to be specifically designed to target his group’s protests.
“We have been to his office, which he’s never in. We have been to his town halls, which he screens and censors us,” he said. “The escalation to be at his house is because he gives us no other option.”
Ostheller said that Smith’s funding sources are AIPAC and Palantir and accused the lawmaker of “war mongering and war profiteering.”
In advance of the meeting, his group posted to social media that Smith “should be in emotional distress.”
“Bringing the guilt and shame of the violence Rep. Smith is complicit in right to his doorstep is the reason we show up,” Seattle Against War stated. “The fact that he continues to hold the tranquility of his evenings in higher regard than the lives of the countless people he has helped murder is evidence that he is not yet in enough emotional distress.”
Bellevue police officers monitored the proceedings. Several protesters booed after the vote.
