San Jose official ordered to pay $54K in court fees

An unusual scene unfolded in the San Jose City Council chambers on Tuesday as a man approached the dais and served District 5 Councilmember Peter Ortiz with legal documents. The incident, which has raised eyebrows online and in City Hall, is part of the fallout from an anti-harassment suit that Ortiz lost earlier this year.

Ortiz filed the civil suit in December 2023, seeking a restraining order against Robert Saenz, the owner of popular social media accounts posting about San Jose, after he made a series of derogatory posts targeting the then first-year councilmember. Ortiz lost the case on appeal in January after judges ruled the speech fell under constitutional First Amendment protections. He has been ordered to pay Saenz $54,000 in attorney fees, according to a representative who said Ortiz has still not paid.

“He never responded,” Patrick Evans, Saenz’s attorney, told San José Spotlight.

The documents served Tuesday to Ortiz, who is running for a second term representing East San Jose, included one ordering him to appear at an Oct. 5 hearing and a subpoena for his personal finance records. Such court proceedings are intended to bring to light a debtor’s assets.

Evans has also filed to garnish Ortiz’s wages if payments do not begin within the coming weeks, he said.

Ortiz did not respond to requests for comment.

A video of Tuesday’s incident shows process server Mark Andrews walking up to the dais prior to the start of the council meeting and placing the court documents in front of Ortiz. A brief verbal exchange between the two follows as Andrews walks away.

The video, captured by independent journalist Susan Bassi, has since circulated widely online in posts that have gathered millions of views.

Ortiz’s 2023 lawsuit centered on a series of online posts from Saenz, who maintained the popular ESSJ Times Instagram page.

The page, which now operates under a different name but at the time had more than 54,000 followers, covers current affairs in San Jose, often featuring videos of public safety-related incidents. In some posts, Saenz has also spoken out on transgender issues. One video, cited in the lawsuit, equated support for gender affirming care for minors with child abuse, using the derogatory term “groomer” for those who support such care.

The harassment case came as a direct response to a video post from Saenz that included an image of Ortiz’s face with the words “brown puppet” superimposed on top. In that post, Saenz claimed Ortiz, who is Latino, does not represent San Jose’s Latino and Mexican community.

“Especially the majority of the community that is against grooming our children,” Saenz wrote in the post.

In court filings, Ortiz said the posts “falsely accusing me of ‘grooming’ or sexualizing children” have attracted swarms of negative comments directed against him and have put his safety as well as that of his girlfriend at risk. The post also included images of Ortiz’s girlfriend.

“(Saenz) is aware of how his posts are interpreted by his followers and encourages them to attack my girlfriend and me online by including our Instagram account usernames in his posts,” Ortiz wrote in filings for the court. “(Saenz) sees the comments from his followers calling for violence and does nothing to discourage that discourse.”

Saenz’s posts targeting Ortiz appeared months after the councilmember had joined his colleagues in taking a public stand in support of transgender people and the broader LGBTQ+ community. The city council passed a unanimous resolution of solidarity with the groups in October of 2023, a move that came in response to a local, parent-led backlash against the inclusion of LGBTQ+ topics and materials in school curriculums.

At first, Santa Clara County Superior Court Commissioner Johanna Thai Van Dat granted Ortiz’s request for a restraining order, which restricted Saenz from approaching Ortiz or his girlfriend. It also blocked Saenz from making any more “defamatory statements” about the pair.

But the decision was later overturned when another judge, Eric Geffon, struck down the lawsuit in an April 2024 ruling. While stating that Saenz’s posts traffic “in the conspiracy-theory language that has become all too common in our current political climate,” Geffon found the comments to be constitutionally protected speech. In the ruling, Geffon noted the posts relate to political matters, such as who should serve on city council and what policies they should pursue.

Ortiz appealed the ruling, but in January, a court of appeal affirmed the lower court’s ruling.

Evans said he hopes the outcome sends a message to local elected leaders.

“The case is important to show city council people, politicians generally, that they have to be careful about taking action against a constituent,” Evans said. “They have to think hard — is that speech really threatening me? Is it defamatory? Or is it just free speech that’s protected?”

Editor’s Note: Santa Clara County Superior Court Commissioner Johanna Thai Van Dat was incorrectly identified as a judge. 

Contact Keith Menconi at [email protected] or @KeithMenconi on X.