FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Presidential election denial. COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Palm Beach County Commissioners perhaps have heard and seen it all.

Still, commissioners’ attention turned to what could be done to curb hate speech on April 2, after a group of people at a meeting spoke one by one at a lectern — making disparaging remarks about Jewish people, and two of them invoking Adolf Hitler.

“It was shocking but unfortunately I guess not surprising that people would come out from underneath their rocks and spread their hate,” Commissioner Gregg Weiss said during a meeting on Tuesday.

Weiss said that even though what was said on April 2 did not violate the First Amendment, it did not mean it was not “disgusting.”

“Hate speech is protected under the First Amendment,” County Attorney Denise Coffman said during the Tuesday meeting. “But I think sometimes the board has a decision to make in their heart and their conscience, and sometimes we make stands because that’s the right thing to do.”

Current county rules state matters by the public should be “germane to county business,” but during the meeting, Coffman said the board could be allowed in the future to cut people off, midsentence, if they begin talking about something not within the scope of the board’s authority.

“We’re going to beef up the rules a little bit and focus on the fact that we only want people to talk about things that are relevant to the Board of County Commissioners,” Coffman said.

A “more robust discussion” is still needed in order to tie the idea down, she said, before rules are enacted.

“If somebody makes a comment about being unhappy with the resolution of the board, that’s clearly within the scope of the board,” she said. “But at that point, if they continue to make political statements or statements that are unrelated to the business of the board, you can cut them off if it’s unrelated to us, but we must be consistent, everyone gets treated the same.”

She added: “The conscience of the board is such that we’re willing to take a little bit more risk than is strictly conservative, which, you know, attorneys always want to be the most conservative people in the room when it comes to risk.”

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