San Diego artist and street performer William Dorsett has reached a $450,000 settlement with the City of San Diego following a yearslong legal battle stemming from a 2023 incident in Balboa Park in which he was cited for disorderly conduct after criticizing park rangers while defending another busker during a bubble performance enforcement action.
The settlement, first reported by Courthouse News, formally resolves a federal civil rights lawsuit that not only challenged Dorsett’s citation, but ultimately succeeded in striking down San Diego Municipal Code § 56.27, an obscure ordinance dating back to 1895 that criminalized “offensive,” “vulgar,” or “indecent” language in public places.
The case has increasingly become viewed by civil liberties advocates as emblematic of a broader pattern of San Diego relying on antiquated municipal laws and discretionary enforcement practices to police public expression, particularly involving buskers, artists, performers, activists, yoga instructors, and informal public gatherings.
The underlying confrontation occurred on June 25, 2023, when Dorsett was documenting and observing interactions between Balboa Park performers and San Diego park rangers amid heightened enforcement activity targeting buskers and street artists. According to court filings and video footage later circulated online, another performer was being cited over a bubble show when Dorsett verbally criticized the officers, telling the performer not to be intimidated and calling the rangers “bullies.”
Park Ranger Zadok Othniel then cited Dorsett himself under Section 56.27 for disorderly conduct.
At first glance, the citation may have appeared minor. But the legal implications quickly escalated after Dorsett was convicted in San Diego Superior Court despite arguing that his comments constituted constitutionally protected speech criticizing government officials.
Dorsett appealed the conviction and won. In May 2024, California’s appellate court reversed the conviction, finding the speech protected under the First Amendment. He subsequently filed a federal civil rights lawsuit challenging not only the citation itself, but the constitutionality of the ordinance underpinning it.
The lawsuit placed renewed scrutiny on San Diego’s municipal code, revealing that Section 56.27 had remained on the books for roughly 130 years despite longstanding constitutional concerns surrounding vague restrictions on speech.
In a pivotal ruling issued in July 2025, U.S. District Judge Barry Moskowitz found the ordinance unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, concluding it granted excessive discretion to law enforcement officers to determine what speech crossed the line into criminal conduct.
“The Constitution protects Dorsett’s right to criticize law officers,” Moskowitz wrote, noting the ordinance improperly allowed police and park rangers to punish speech they merely viewed as offensive or vulgar.
The city repealed the ordinance in March 2025 while the litigation remained ongoing, though the repeal did not insulate San Diego from liability for prior enforcement.
According to Dorsett’s attorney, Michele Akemi McKenzie, discovery in the federal case uncovered additional examples of San Diego officials allegedly using the ordinance to suppress speech they disliked, strengthening arguments that the law had become a tool for selective enforcement against critics, performers, and outspoken individuals in public spaces.
The City Council quietly approved the $450,000 settlement in April 2026.
The resolution marks yet another expensive constitutional dispute for San Diego involving expressive activity in public spaces. In recent years, the city has faced mounting legal challenges over its enforcement practices involving street vendors, artists, beach yoga instructors, and public gatherings.
Dorsett himself remains involved in additional litigation against the city tied to sidewalk vending and artistic expression regulations in Ocean Beach and elsewhere. Those lawsuits argue San Diego’s permitting and enforcement systems improperly discriminate against artists and buskers while granting broad discretionary authority to police and city officials.
The Dorsett case also drew renewed attention to another controversial relic of San Diego’s municipal code: the city’s former “seditious language” ordinance, Section 56.30, a World War I-era law repealed in 2020 after criticism that it disproportionately targeted dissent and protected government officials from criticism.
Together, the cases have fueled criticism that San Diego has historically been slow to remove unconstitutional laws from its municipal code until forced to do so through litigation.
The broader backdrop to Dorsett’s victory has been an increasingly tense debate over who gets to use public space in San Diego and under what conditions. In Balboa Park, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, and shoreline areas, conflicts between performers, vendors, instructors, content creators, and enforcement agencies have repeatedly escalated into constitutional disputes over speech, commerce, assembly, and artistic expression.
That debate intensified further following the Ninth Circuit’s landmark 2025 ruling striking down San Diego’s prohibition on teaching yoga classes at beaches and shoreline parks. Like the Dorsett case, federal judges concluded the city had granted excessive enforcement discretion to officials regulating expressive activity in public areas.
Civil liberties advocates argue the repeated legal defeats expose a recurring pattern: San Diego relying on vague, selectively enforced rules to control activities officials find inconvenient, disruptive, or difficult to categorize.
For Dorsett, the settlement represents both personal vindication and a broader statement about public criticism of government officials.
“In this case, they were using a 130-year-old law to chill free speech,” Dorsett told Courthouse News. “I feel vindicated.”
The City of San Diego declined to comment on the settlement.
Originally published on May 15, 2026.
