Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons ; Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, Cropped by Resist the Mainstream

On Friday, a federal judge greenlit legal action from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) against two California cities who canceled rallies for them in 2021.

Last year, Gaetz and Greene issued lawsuits against the cities of Anaheim and Riverside, after three separate venues canceled reservations by the lawmakers to hold America First rallies, allegedly after they were inundated by complaints from leftists. 

After the last venue canceled, less than 24 hours before the scheduled event, Gaetz and Greene elected to hold a “peaceful protest against communism” outside Riverside City Hall.

Both Republicans allege that city officials pressured the venues to cancel in response to backlash from leftists, and that the cancellations violate free speech protections.

“Plaintiffs adequately allege that the Municipal Defendants delegated to their respective agents the authority to cancel the rally (and/or ratified the relevant conduct after the fact) and that the event cancellations were expressly predicated on viewpoint discrimination,” U.S. District Judge Hernan Vera, a Biden appointee, wrote in a 22-page opinion.

The ruling marks a win for Gaetz and Greene, but their win was not total. They alleged in their complaint accusations that leftist groups, such as the NAACP, illegally conspired with Anaheim and Riverside officials to stop the rallies. The judge rebuked the lawmakers for a “complete lack of any alleged facts to support a ‘meeting of the minds’ as required for a conspiracy claim.”

“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.

“The gravamen of Plaintiffs’ claims against the Nonprofit Defendants is, both legally and literally, a conspiracy theory that relies purely on conjecture,” the judge continued. “And without an unlawful conspiracy, 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. That is protected.”