A federal judge ruled that Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., can proceed with their lawsuit against two California cities for canceling their political rallies — though not without chastising the two provocative Republicans for their “stunning” effort to blame civil rights organizations for the cancellations.
In an opinion issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Hernán Vera determined that Gaetz and Greene had adequate grounds to allege that the cancellation of their events in Riverside and Anaheim in 2021 was “expressly predicated on viewpoint discrimination,” and allowed their lawsuit against the cities to move forward.
But Vera also ripped into their claims that the two California cities conspired with a slew of civil rights groups to scrap their rallies.
“Here, the Complaint — even charitably construed with all reasonable inferences drawn in Plaintiffs’ favor — is utterly devoid of any specifics plausibly alleging such an agreement,” Vera wrote, calling it “a conspiracy theory that relies purely on conjecture.”
“The effect of Plaintiffs’ unprecedented and stunningly deficient pleading — haling nine civil rights groups into federal court for speaking out against an event — should shock in equal measure civic members from across the political spectrum,” he added.
Two of former President Donald Trump’s fiercest allies in Congress, Gaetz and Greene — who more recently have been a source of dysfunction in the U.S. House — held a series of “America First” rallies in 2021 where they peddled lies about the 2020 election results and conspiracy theories about the Covid vaccines.
Their America First event in Southern California was moved from Laguna Hills to Riverside, and then to Anaheim as residents and civil rights groups mounted protests and the venues pulled out. They ended up staging a protest outside Riverside City Hall “against communism.” The groups named as co-defendants in the lawsuit alongside the cities include the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Unidos for La Causa, Women’s March Action, the Riverside County Democratic Party, Antiracist Riverside and Occupy Democrats. Gaetz and Greene had alleged in their complaint that the organizations violated the duo’s First Amendment rights by mobilizing their supporters to speak out against the event. But Vera pointed out that the groups had simply “exercised their own First Amendment rights to lobby for the cancellation of the event.” “That,” he wrote, “is protected.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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