California helped propel its former governor, Ronald Reagan, to the White House through its 1978 tax revolt, which quickly spread to the vast majority of states. Golden State voters have reaffirmed Proposition 13 for decades, creating a “tax revolt family tree” of amendments that repeatedly frustrate would-be tax hikers.

Local officials and big-government boosters have allegedly found a new way to suppress anti-tax advocacy, however: Dub it “hate speech” and doxxing.

The drafters of California’s “Billionaire Tax” ballot measure, and leaders of the labor union sponsoring it, threatened legal action against a State Assembly candidate for identifying them on his website as the “Looter Dream Team” and pointing visitors to their own institutions’ web pages for contacting them, according to the candidate’s lawyers.

“They tried to threaten me with jail time to take this site down. I fought back. The site stays up,” Richard Lucas, a software company co-founder who calls himself a “suit who knows code,” wrote on his “California Wealth Exodus” website, which also touts a Hoover Institution study finding the tax would actually cost California $25 billion.

The sixth-generation Californian and “rugged individualist” is running as an independent for the 51st District, which runs from Santa Monica to Hollywood. His campaign website encourages supporters to “Become a Dick,” and Lucas describes supporters as “Dickheads.”

A school district in a Los Angeles suburb known for TV and film production muted a parent participating in a board meeting on Zoom for her “hate speech” – promising to campaign against a proposed tax hike, video and a transcript of the meeting shows.

Federal courts have frowned upon viewpoint-based restrictions on public comment, including by the Florida school district that birthed Moms for Liberty.

“This is not the first time they have violated my civil rights,” Melissa Sanders, whose name repeatedly appears in transcripts for Culver City Unified School District board meetings, told Just the News in a Facebook message. She comments occasionally on district posts.

“I’m looking for representation to take legal action against CCUSD” and is currently receiving non-legal assistance from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Sanders said. CCUSD’s board didn’t answer queries.

FIRE pointed Just the News to two warning letters it sent the board on Sanders’ behalf, in December 2024 and February 2025, concerning its alleged disabling of “video capabilities” or removal of public commenters for what the board deemed “intimidating” Zoom backgrounds. Sanders’ background read “TIME TO RESIGN” and mentioned two board members by name.

“Bear in mind [Sanders’] remarks were about fiscal policy, enrollment management, and district budgeting, which are standard topics at any school board meeting,” parent Pedro Frigola, known for challenging the district’s removal of honors English courses in the name of equity, wrote on May 1 for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.

Sharing his experiences serving on various district committees, Frigola said the recasting of disagreement “as a moral violation” was common. When questions about “taxes, staffing, and policy […] can be dismissed rather than engaged, the community loses something essential — not decorum, but accountability.”

The Legislature is also considering wrongthink lessons for nearly every employed Californian, in legislation requiring “anti-hate speech training” for state and local elected officials (AB 1578) and, in a bill that passed Monday, employers with more than five workers (AB 1803).

Not only is “most” hate speech constitutionally protected, but it also “has no clear or consistent definition,” such that efforts to regulate it “risk giving the government sweeping authority to suppress views it doesn’t like,” FIRE warned in an analysis of the legislation.

“We have seen these ideas tried on campuses, and we have seen them fail time and time again,” wrote Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Adam Goldstein and legislative counsel Greg Gonzalez. “We should not be exporting them to workplaces at large or into the offices of elected officials.”

No reasonable fear for ‘Looter Dream Team’

The “Looter Dream Team,” as identified by candidate Lucas, consists of the Billionaire Tax’s academic drafters and union sponsors.

They are the University of Missouri’s David Gamage, University of California Berkeley’s Brian Galle and Emmanuel Saez, UC-Davis’s Darien Shanske, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West President Dave Regan and his chief of staff Suzanne Jimenez.

Their lawyer, Catha Worthman, sent cease-and-desist letters to Lucas on Feb. 10 and April 24, alleging that his naming and shaming of the group and links to their public contact information violated California’s anti-doxxing laws, according to an April 27 response letter from the Alliance Defending Freedom representing Lucas.

ADF didn’t make its letter public until May 6 and told Just the News it would not share the C&D letters Lucas received. Worthman hasn’t answered a request for her response to ADF.

Filing a lawsuit against Lucas would subject the so-called looters to “potential penalties, attorney’s fees, and immediate dismissal” under California’s statutory ban on “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” ADF told Worthman.

His campaign “seeks to persuade the public to voice concerns” about the Billionaire Tax “directly to those who drafted and submitted it,” promoting the ballot measure in “televised interviews, open letters, and articles” and the wealth-tax concept as early as 2021, ADF said.

“They have willingly entered the public sphere by throwing their support behind a controversial political opinion” and can’t be surprised to hear “harsh opinions” in response, with Jimenez even identifying herself as the coalition spokesperson, the response says.

Lucas cannot violate state anti-doxxing laws, written to “protect victims of stalking, domestic violence, and similarly abhorrent crimes,” because he “lacks the requisite intent” to place Worthman’s clients “in reasonable fear for their safety, or the safety of the other person’s immediate family,” ADF said.

Sharing photos and contact information “is not sufficient to place anyone, especially a limited purpose public figure, in reasonable fear for their safety,” and Lucas “has not shared or even attempted to gather nonpublic personal information,” ADF said. 

The law also requires doxxing to have “no legitimate purpose,” which clearly doesn’t apply to a political campaign opposing “massive new taxes on California’s wealthiest residents,” ADF said. Encouraging “public figures to change their minds” is “the most foundational kind of political activism” and promotes “healthy debate and discussion.”

Enforcing residency requirements is hateful?

The Culver City Unified school board holds meetings in a hybrid format, with some commenters on Zoom and others in the room with board members. 

At its March 10 meeting, parent Sanders commented via Zoom that she will campaign against any “parcel tax” that comes up for a vote “until you guys get a handle on our student body” and better enforce residency requirements in the district. She claimed more than 90% of the budget goes toward “payroll and benefits” and asked for that to be reduced.

“Can we mute the hate speech, please?” board member Triston Ezidore said, interrupting Sanders as her time expired, followed by a lengthy pause and Sanders’ incredulous response, “what hate speech?” The chair told Sanders her time was up and moved on. 

“The exchange at the board meeting felt so familiar because the mechanism was the same,” parent Frigola, who was also watching the March 10 meeting, wrote for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism this month. “You don’t have to refute an argument if you can simply relabel it” as “harmful or hateful.”

Sanders was confronting the district about “trade-offs […] a structural budget problem driven by declining enrollment and a cost structure that does not easily adjust,” and by muting her, the district conveyed to participants “which arguments are safe to express and which ones carry a cost,” a chilling effect that worsens governance over time, Frigola wrote.

He experienced indirect invalidation of disagreement as a volunteer on several district committees, including when he protested the Equity Advisory Council’s “Norm Setting Agreement” that asked participants to “elevate marginalized voices” and “respect intersectionality,” Frigola wrote.

The only response he got was the facilitator reading aloud “a prepared anti-hate statement, the kind now recited before public comment at municipal meetings,” he said. “The implication was clear enough. What I had said was not just wrong, but out of bounds.”