Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., left, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., address attendees during a rally, Friday, May 7, 2021, in The Villages, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
A litany of civil rights groups are demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and former attorney general candidate Matt Gaetz over a failed lawsuit blaming various nonprofits for a canceled speech in Southern California.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Gaetz, until this month a GOP representative from Florida, and Greene, a Georgia Republican — both of whom are considered to be members of the party’s right-wing and pro-Trump flanks — sued the cities of Riverside and Anaheim over a political rally that was scheduled to occur in July 2021.
While the court allowed the lawsuit against the municipalities to move forward, U.S. District Judge Hernan Vera strongly rejected attempts to sue organizations like the NAACP, LULAC, the League of Women Voters and various local entities as “both legally and literally, a conspiracy theory that relies purely on conjecture.”
Late last month, Gaetz, Greene and various, associated political committees agreed with the defendant cities, and a hospitality company that also remained on the legal hook as a defendant, to dismiss the lawsuit. In the stipulation asking to dismiss the case with prejudice filed in the Central District of California on Oct. 28, the plaintiffs and defendants agreed “[a]ll parties will bear their own costs and attorneys’ fees.”
Now, the once-sued nonprofits are effectively saying: “Not so fast.”
While the court granted the motion to dismiss on Oct. 30, Vera came back to the case and issued a second order on Nov. 12, giving the “prevailing defendants” until Nov. 20 to file motions for attorneys fees.
In a series of motions for attorneys fees filed Wednesday evening, six nonprofits submitted five distinct filings for attorneys fees — along with a bevy of supporting documents in service of those requests.
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In sum, the defendants are requesting in excess of $548,000 in attorneys fees and costs from Gaetz and Greene.
The NAACP is asking for over $184,000. California LULAC groups are asking for just shy of $155,000. The League of Women Voters is asking for over $112,000. The group Unidos for La Causa is asking for some $53,000. The Riverside Democratic Party and Women’s March Action are asking for a combined amount of $43,800.
To plead their case, the nonprofit defendants largely rely on the fact of the March order dismissing them from the case.
“The Court dismissed Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint as fatally deficient, without leave to amend,” the League of Women Voters wrote in their motion. “Plaintiffs’ claims against the League were frivolous, unreasonable, and devoid of foundation.”
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Another motion cites the “frivolousness” of the original lawsuit as the basis for the defendants’ original win — noting that original petition alleged a conspiracy “without offering a single factual allegation” in support of the claim.
The Unidos motion highlights the one of the court’s descriptions of the Gaetz-Greene lawsuit (emphasis in original):
The Court stated that “[t]he 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 measures civic members from across the political spectrum.”
The NAACP motion accuses Gaetz and Greene of using the legal system to go after “their political opponents” and says the firebrand politicians attacked the nonprofits because they “merely exercised their First Amendment rights to protest” the rally in question.
“To bring this claim, Plaintiffs relied on a 150-year old civil rights law intended to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from their violent and vigilante acts to deprive voters of their rights,” the NAACP motion continues. “As this Court found, the claim was utterly without merit. Fortunately, federal law provides a mechanism to discourage the misuse of such important federal civil rights actions by allowing parties who have been wrongly and frivolously accused of recouping their attorneys’ fees.”
Law&Crime reached out to attorneys for Gaetz and Greene for comment on this story but no response was immediately forthcoming at the time of publication.
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