Miami Beach resident Raquel Pacheco speaks with a police officer on Feb. 4, 2026.
Carl Juste
cjuste@miamiherald.com
Raquel Pacheco, whose critical Facebook comment about Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner led to police officers showing up at her home in a January incident that went viral, filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday, alleging violations of her First Amendment rights.
The complaint names the city, Meiner, Police Chief Wayne Jones and three other city officials as defendants.
“One does not truly understand the meaning of freedom of speech until that freedom is under attack,” Pacheco told the Miami Herald in a statement. “Every day since January 12th, when police appeared at my door, I have lived that reality firsthand.”
Pacheco is being represented by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Representatives for Meiner, Jones and the city of Miami Beach did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday afternoon.
The lawsuit accuses the city of Miami Beach of “a practice of taking adverse action and retaliating against individuals and groups who express support for the Palestinian people and/or criticize the State of Israel.”
“City officials wield the power of government to silence such opinions,” the complaint states.
The situation began when Pacheco posted a comment below a Facebook post by Meiner, in which the mayor called Miami Beach “a safe haven for everyone.” Pacheco wrote, in part, that Meiner “consistently calls for the death of all Palestinians.”
Meiner has not explicitly called for the death of Palestinians. Pacheco, who has run unsuccessfully for city and state elected office, previously told the Herald she was alluding to statements Meiner has made expressing his support for Israel and its war in Gaza.
Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner attends a City Commission on Feb. 5, 2026, at Miami Beach City Hall. Carl Juste cjuste@miamiherald.com
When two detectives later knocked on her door, Pacheco recorded their interaction. The video showed officers telling Pacheco that they were trying to prevent “someone else getting agitated or agreeing with the statement” and advising her to “refrain from posting things like that because that can get something incited.”
Emails obtained by the Herald later showed that Meiner had flagged the comment to police before officers went to Pacheco’s home. Jones, the police chief, said Meiner never directed officers to take action. Pacheco was not charged with a crime.
READ MORE: ‘Dangerous Escalation’: Emails show Miami Beach mayor sent Facebook post to police
Pacheco’s lawsuit paints the incident as an escalation of a “campaign of viewpoint-based intimidation and discrimination” in Miami Beach.
As other examples, it cites instances at City Commission meetings where pro-Palestinian speakers have had their microphones cut off; the city’s enactment of an ordinance restricting protests that prompted a lawsuit by a pro-Palestinian organization; and Meiner’s attempt to terminate the lease of independent movie theater O Cinema for screening a documentary about the West Bank.
“The First Amendment prohibits the government from using the coercive power of the State to suppress political dissent,” Jenin Younes, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s national legal director, said in a statement. “This kind of unlawful action chills speech, because most people will stay silent rather than risk future punishment. That is exactly what the First Amendment sought to prevent, and why we are filing this lawsuit.”
Pacheco is seeking declarations that the defendants violated the First Amendment, an injunction preventing them from doing so in the future, and damages for “distress, humiliation, and reputational damage.”
The complaint also names City Manager Eric Carpenter, Commissioners David Suarez and Tanya Katzoff Bhatt, and unnamed police detectives as defendants.
Suarez and Bhatt, the suit alleges, illegally blocked Pacheco from their official Facebook pages.
Suarez declined to comment.
Bhatt told the Herald that Pacheco “is not blocked, nor has she ever been blocked” from her official Facebook page.
Miami Herald
Aaron Leibowitz covers the city of Miami Beach for the Miami Herald, where he has worked as a local government reporter since 2019. He was part of a team that won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside. He is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School’s Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism.