The New Normal of Public Meeting Disruptions

By Tanya Mannes Castaneda, APR | August 25, 2026

Have you ever been to a public meeting where people in the audience shouted down the elected officials speaking at the dais to the point that they couldn’t be heard?

A meeting where the Mayor asked people to be respectful, but they didn’t listen?

Where the public’s business had to be paused until officials could restore order?

I have, and I’m not alone.

What looks like a meeting-management headache is fast becoming a crisis communications problem for public agencies across California and beyond.

Recent incidents in Sacramento, Shasta County and Imperial County underscore the increasingly fraught nature of public meetings in California today. And rather than being limited to one hot topic, numerous issues have caused disruptions.

In Sacramento, a City Council meeting was interrupted by attendees who wanted changes to a plan on how the city would respond to federal immigration enforcement. In Shasta County, an activist sat on the floor of the chamber and refused to leave during a discussion of election funds. In Imperial County, a man was removed for “disruptive behavior” from a Board of Supervisors meeting on a data center proposal. The last two of these cases resulted in arrests and charges.

And the issue is not limited to California — a meeting in Massachusetts recently “erupted into chaos” over a scheduled decision on Automated License Plate Readers.

Situations like these are uncomfortable. They force us to reckon with questions about whether and when it’s appropriate to approach people who are disrupting a meeting, call a recess, ask someone to leave, or even involve law enforcement to remove someone from the chamber. California’s open meeting law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, gives agencies narrow, specific authority to address such issues. In some cases, disruptions also raise safety concerns, especially when threats are made.

From a crisis communications perspective, disruptions to public meetings require a new way of thinking about communications around Board and Council meetings. Each agency needs a crisis communications strategy to prepare for disruptions — not only how to anticipate them, but how to respond to the media and the public, including people in the room. Moreover, the agency must consider the implications for public trust and reputation of having its business disrupted in a dramatic way.

After all, most constituents still want their government to run smoothly. Disruptions can discourage constituents who want to contribute their opinions. It can cause them to avoid attending meetings. And concerningly, it can cause them to lose trust in government’s ability to manage their meetings.

Even without unpacking the root causes of such behavior, public agencies need a practical strategy to manage disruptions that interfere with doing the public’s business — and that includes a crisis communications plan.