A Durham resident facing a two-year ban from Durham City Hall will regain access to the building next week—roughly two years earlier than expected—after a Monday appeal hearing resulted in the restriction being lifted.
Amanda Wallace was banned from City Hall in December after disrupting the swearing-in ceremony of newly elected Councilmember Matt Kopac. From her seat, Wallace spent several minutes loudly criticizing both Kopac and the judge administering the oath before a police officer escorted her out of the chambers. Kopac was subsequently sworn in.
City Manager Bo Ferguson, who independently made the calls both to impose and to lift the ban, told the INDY last month that the measure had nothing to do with the words Wallace uttered—he didn’t even remember what Wallace had said, he said—but rather with the fact that her conduct had interfered with the transfer of power.
To Ferguson’s knowledge, he said, the ban he issued was unprecedented in Durham—but so was the disruption itself. In his 13 years with the city of Durham and 25 total years in local government, he said he had never seen someone interrupt a swearing-in ceremony.
The two-year ban represented the maximum allowed sentence under city code. The severity of the penalty prompted criticism from the public and some council members—even Kopac said it was “not what I would have asked for”—and made Ferguson’s quick reversal striking.
Monday’s closed hearing discussion—a recording of which the INDY reviewed—and the decision letter sent to Wallace following the hearing suggest Ferguson’s primary aim was narrower than it initially appeared. While the ban seemed like it had initially been enacted as a sweeping punitive measure, Ferguson’s focus centered on preventing a repeat disruption at the next swearing-in ceremony in December 2027.
Ferguson clarified in the hearing and decision letter that while enforcing decorum during disruptions in meetings typically falls to the mayor, Ferguson’s role as city manager is to safeguard core governmental functions like swearing-in ceremonies. The ban’s two-year duration, Ferguson explained, was specifically calibrated to keep Wallace away through the 2027 ceremonial proceeding.
Ferguson offered Wallace what he called “a path forward” during the hearing. If Wallace would acknowledge that the city has rules that govern participation in public meetings—including during ceremonial functions like swearing-ins—and that the city has authority to enforce those rules, he would be comfortable lifting the ban, he told her. Wallace ultimately acknowledged the city rules during the hearing.
“After considering the information presented at the hearing and our discussion, I have decided to modify the existing trespass notice,” Ferguson wrote in a letter the next day. The ban will now expire January 12 of this year.
The issue of access not only underpinned the ban but swirled around the appeal hearing itself, which was closed to the public. Just before the hearing was set to start, a throng of Wallace’s supporters—many of them perennial speakers at public meetings with newly heightened fears that the city might muzzle them—intercepted Ferguson when he was on his way into the hearing and demanded an explanation for the closed-door format.
One supporter had printed out the section of municipal code that pertains to trespass appeals and highlighted parts of it in yellow, waving it around and insisting that nothing in the code states appeal hearings must be closed to the public.
Ferguson told the group that such hearings are considered administrative meetings between city staff and an individual, which are not open to the public. The group eventually relented when Ferguson pointed out that they were delaying the hearing.
Wallace was permitted to bring a legal representative and an emotional support companion into the hearing. She was also allowed to take an audio recording, which she shared with the INDY.
From the hearing’s outset, Ferguson seemed eager to find a way to drop the ban. If Wallace agreed—verbally or in a written statement—to abide by the city’s time, place, and manner restrictions on speech during council proceedings going forward, Ferguson said, he would be “very comfortable” with her returning to City Hall. But if Wallace’s position was that “anyone who enters the council chambers, because of free speech, has a right to speak at any time that they want,” Ferguson said he would not feel comfortable lifting the ban.
Wallace pushed back on the request. She said Ferguson asking her to acknowledge city rules governing public behavior felt uncomfortable.
“It’s like a ‘yes, master’ thing,” Wallace told Ferguson. “That’s what it feels like right now, that I got to come to you and tell you—you, who are you?—I have to say this to you. That’s not cool.”
Ferguson immediately offered an apology. He went on to present a more direct request: Could Wallace acknowledge that, if Ferguson lifted the trespass and Wallace returned to meetings but was called out of order by the mayor for violating decorum rules, it could be grounds to reinstate a trespass?
“I acknowledge that the decorum rules are what they are, and the mayor has the right to make that decision. And as the city manager, you have the right to enforce whatever it is per the ordinance that you would like to do. I acknowledge that,” Wallace responded.
In his decision letter, Ferguson wrote that during the hearing, Wallace acknowledged the existence of the city’s participation rules and its authority to enforce them.
While Wallace “did not expressly commit to following those rules in the future,” Ferguson wrote, she “also did not state an intent to disregard them.”
The crux of Wallace’s appeal, laid out in writing and by her lawyer Italo Medelius during the hearing, was that the ban violated Wallace’s First Amendment protections primarily due to the ban’s length of two years. This, Medelius argued, amounted to an unconstitutional prior restraint on Wallace’s ability to participate in civic discourse.
Under the ban, Wallace was still allowed to participate in public meetings remotely via Zoom. Banning someone from City Hall before the era of virtual meetings would have posed a more direct free speech question by cutting off access to government proceedings entirely—which may be part of the reason why such a ban had not been used before.
In Medelius’ view, being limited to virtual participation still violated Wallace’s free speech rights.
“If the only avenue to give your speech to the city is virtual, then the city has full control to mute you, to kick you out,” he told the INDY.
During the hearing, Ferguson clarified that such constitutional issues are beyond the scope of an administrative hearing. He noted that he had consulted with the city attorney, who was present during the administrative hearing, on potential legal issues and believes the ordinance is constitutional and Ferguson’s use of it is defensible.
The purpose of an administrative hearing, Ferguson explained, is for Wallace to present facts that might compel him to change his position. Ferguson told Wallace her written appeal hadn’t offered evidence that would undermine his original decision. Still, he offered her the out.
To supplement the written appeal, Wallace presented a petition with around 200 signatures and a letter of support from Councilmember Nate Baker calling the ban a “disproportionate punishment” that “does not serve the best interests of Council proceedings or the people of Durham,” among other materials.
Wallace is the founder of Operation Stop CPS, an organization fighting for child protective services reform. She has previously been served no-contact orders from Durham County and Person County. Ferguson told the INDY last month that Wallace’s other conflicts with local government were not a major consideration in issuing the ban from Durham City Hall.
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