Judge permits Gaetz, Greene to sue California cities that canceled their events

A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene to sue two California cities that canceled their political events in 2021.

But the judge excoriated the two pro-Trump firebrands for attempting to blame the cancellation on a slew of liberal advocacy groups — from the NAACP to the League of Women Voters to LULAC, who the pair accused of conspiring with Anaheim and Riverside, Calif., to shut down their planned rallies.

The lawsuit by the two GOP lawmakers is “utterly devoid of any specifics plausibly alleging such an agreement,” wrote U.S. District Judge Hernan Vera in a 22-page opinion, calling it “both legally and literally, a conspiracy theory that relies purely on conjecture.”

In fact, he said, Gaetz and Greene had attempted with their lawsuit what they accused the groups of doing to them: seeking to punish political rivals for speaking out against them.

“[H]aling 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,” Vera wrote.

The opinion arose from a little-noticed lawsuit that has been pending for months in the Central District of California’s federal courthouse. Gaetz and Greene filed suit in July, seeking damages and a court order prohibiting similar cancellations in the future. Their complaint stemmed from their multiple attempts to book rallies, first in Riverside and then in Anaheim, only to have venues yanked from them at the last minute amid pressure from city officials.

Notably, their attorneys in the suit include John Eastman, an architect of Donald Trump’s bid to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election and who is facing a potential disbarment ruling as soon as next week.

The city officials who pushed their local venues to cancel Gaetz and Greene’s events were responding, in part, to a political backlash from civic groups and their members, who complained that the local venues would host the far-right political events.

Vera, a Biden appointee, agreed that Gaetz and Greene had at least a plausible case against both cities, which appeared to lean on the venues to cancel the events, in large part because of “viewpoint discrimination.” But attempting to punish the civic groups for speaking out and mobilizing their members was a bridge too far, Vera concluded.

“All that is left to aver against the Nonprofit Defendants are the unremarkable allegations that they exercised their own First Amendment rights to lobby for the cancellation of the event,” he wrote. “That is protected.”