A slew of civil rights organizations are demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and former attorney general candidate Matt Gaetz in connection with a failed lawsuit blaming various nonprofits for a canceled speech in Southern California.
As previously reported, Gaetz, a Republican representative from Florida until this month, and Greene, a Republican from Georgia, both considered members of the party’s right-wing and pro-Trump flanks, sued the cities of Riverside and Anaheim over a political rally scheduled for July 2021.
While the court allowed the lawsuit against the municipalities to proceed, U.S. District Judge Hernan Vera strongly rejected attempts to sue organizations such as 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 reached an agreement with the defendant cities, as well as a hospitality company that remained a defendant in the lawsuit, to dismiss it.
In the stipulation asking to dismiss the case with prejudice filed in the Central District of California on October 28, the plaintiffs and defendants agreed that “[a]ll parties will bear their own costs and attorneys’ fees.”
Now, the previously sued nonprofits are effectively saying, “Not so fast.”
While the court granted the motion to dismiss on October 30, Vera returned to the case and issued a second order on November 12, giving the “prevailing defendants” until November 20 to file motions for attorneys’ fees.
Six nonprofit organizations filed five separate motions for attorneys fees on Wednesday evening, along with a slew of supporting documents.
In total, the defendants are requesting more than $548,000 in attorney fees and costs from Gaetz and Greene.
The NAACP is asking for more than $184,000. California LULAC groups are asking for just under $155,000. The League of Women Voters is asking for more than $112,000.
The group Unidos for La Causa is asking for $53,000. The Riverside Democratic Party and Women’s March Action are seeking a total of $43,800.
To plead their case, the nonprofit defendants rely heavily on 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 stated in their motion. “Plaintiffs’ claims against the League were frivolous, unreasonable, and devoid of foundation.”
Another motion cites the “frivolousness” of the original lawsuit as the basis for the defendants’ initial victory, noting that the original petition alleged a conspiracy “without offering a single factual allegation” to support the claim.
The Unidos motion emphasizes one of the court’s descriptions of the Gaetz-Greene case (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.”
