Following a failed lawsuit that blamed different nonprofits for a canceled speech in Southern California, a long list of civil rights organizations is requesting hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and former attorney general candidate Matt Gaetz.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Gaetz, a Republican from Florida who was a GOP representative until this month, and Greene, a Republican from Georgia, are both regarded as belonging to the right-wing and pro-Trump wings of the party. They sued the cities of Riverside and Anaheim over a planned political rally in July 2021.
U.S. District Judge Hernan Vera firmly rejected attempts to sue groups like the NAACP, LULAC, the League of Women Voters, and other local entities as both legally and literally, a conspiracy theory that is based solely on speculation, even though the court permitted the lawsuit against the municipalities to proceed.
The case was dismissed by Gaetz, Greene, and several related political committees late last month in agreement with the defendant cities and a hospitality corporation that was still legally liable as a defendant. The plaintiffs and defendants agreed that each party would pay their own legal expenses and costs in the stipulation asking to dismiss the action with prejudice that was filed in the Central District of California on October 28.
The NGOs who were previously sued are now essentially saying: Not so fast.
Vera returned to the case on November 12 and issued a second order, allowing the prevailing defendants until November 20 to submit requests for attorneys’ fees, even though the court had approved the petition to dismiss on October 30.
Six nonprofit organizations filed five separate motions for attorneys’ fees and a plethora of supporting documents in response to those demands in a sequence of motions filed Wednesday evening.
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All told, the defendants are asking Gaetz and Greene for more than $548,000 in legal expenses and costs.
Over $184,000 is what the NAACP is requesting. California LULAC organizations are requesting little under $155,000. More than $112,000 is being sought by the League of Women Voters. Unidos for La Causa is requesting about $53,000. Together, the Women’s March Action and the Riverside Democratic Party are attempting to raise $43,800.
The nonprofit defendants primarily use the March order that dismissed them from the case as support for their plea.
The Court dismissed Plaintiffs First Amended Complaint as fatally deficient, without leave to amend, the League of Women Voterswrote 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.
TheUnidos motionhighlights the one of the court s descriptions of the Gaetz-Greene lawsuit (emphasis in original):
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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