Judge Says Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene Can Sue Cities For Canceled Rally
But he also slammed the reps’ baseless “conspiracy theory”’ about civil-rights groups targeting them.
Tom Williams/Getty Images
A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to proceed with their lawsuit against two California cities for canceling their rallies—but also shredded their claims that civil rights advocacy groups conspired against them.
Judge Hernán Vera wrote that Greene and Gaetz had adequately convinced the court that the cities of Anaheim and Riverside plausibly canceled their 2021 event based on “viewpoint discrimination.” The ruling allows the reps to press forward their case against the cities.
But their claims that several civil-rights groups, including the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, conspired with the cities against them were full of “numerous fatal deficiencies,” Vera added.
“Chief among them is the complete lack of any alleged facts to support a “meeting of the minds” as required for a conspiracy claim,” the judge wrote.
He slammed the attempt to pin the blame for the cancellation on the civil rights advocates as “both legally and literally, a conspiracy theory that relies purely on conjecture” and said the mere accusation should “shock in equal measure civic members from across the spectrum.”
In effect, the reps had made baseless claims of conspiracy to attack the organizations’ rights to protest, which are protected under the First Amendment.
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The event in question was an “America First” rally in 2021 where Gaetz and Greene pushed Donald Trump’s stolen-election lies and peddled conspiracy theories against COVID vaccines. Their event was moved from Laguna Hills to Riverside and then to Anaheim as the cities pulled out, facing protests from the civil-rights groups in question and local residents.
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