Free Speech

Eventbrite Bars Riley Gaines Promotion

We have previously discussed platforms like GoFundMe barring conservative groups and causes after cancel campaigns by activists to cut off financial support for opposing groups. The latest such controversy concerns Riley Gaines who was barred from using the ticketing company Eventbrite for an upcoming event on promoting biological women in sports.

As in the past, the free speech objections made to such censorship is not due to any affiliation or support for the underlying causes. Rather it is an attack on free speech values by platforms that should remain neutral on questions that divide us. These companies can facilitate national debates by allowing citizens to associate and speak on these issues.

While Gaines has become a lightening rod for the controversy over transwomen competing in women’s sports, various international sporting organizations have adopted more strict rules or outright bans on transgender athletes, including a recent ban for track and field competitions.

Once again, the adoption of such bans does not mean that they are correct or wise. Rather, the question is whether Eventbrite should be barring access for groups and individuals in holding such events. For example, would Eventbrite bar the track and field association from holding an event to explain and discuss its recent ban?

Gaines was prevented from promoting her November 3 speech at the University of California, Davis.

Eventbrite sent the following to the group  institute in an email:

“Hello,

We’re reaching out regarding your event listing, Protecting Women’s Sports with Riley Gaines.

We have determined that your event is not permitted on the Eventbrite marketplace as it violates our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, with which all users agree to comply. Specifically, we do not allow content or events that – through on- or off-platform activity – discriminate against, harass, disparage, threaten, incite violence against, or otherwise target individuals or groups based on their actual or perceived race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, veteran status, age, or disability. As a result, your event has been unpublished. Please be aware that severe or repeated violations of our guidelines may result in the suspension or termination of your Eventbrite account.

Please reply directly to this email if you have any further questions. We appreciate your understanding and thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Best,

Eventbrite Trust and Safety”

The company has also banned events to discuss policies limiting access to bathrooms as “hateful.”

Critics have noted that pro-Hamas groups are allowed to use the site as are radical far left groups.

For years, many politicians and pundits have dismissed free-speech concerns by noting that the First Amendment only applies to the government. So long as corporations do the censoring, they contend, it is not a free-speech problem.

This obviously is wrong on several fronts.

The First Amendment is not the exclusive measure of free speech. Corporate censorship of political commentaries or news stories are denials of free speech that harm our democratic system.

Second, this is a First Amendment violation. The Twitter files have substantiated long-standing concerns over “censorship by surrogate” or proxy. As with other amendments like the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches or seizures, the government cannot use private agents to do indirectly what it cannot do directly. A federal court recently found precisely this type of agency relationship between the federal government and social media companies.

Transgender policies raise difficult and divisive issues for our nation. We need to be able to discuss these issues and seek common answers or approaches. Many citizens are divided. We can only reach a consensus through dialogue and debate.

What Eventbrite is doing is obstructing such efforts by imposing its own corporate values on its customers. I understand why transgender people would object to these events. I have transgender students who I want to feel safe and valued in our community. Yet, limiting free speech events is not the answer. For social media and event companies, it is important to allow views on both sides to be expressed if we have any hope for a national resolution of these questions.

168 thoughts on “Eventbrite Bars Riley Gaines Promotion”

  1. They cancel a woman from using their services who wants to speak about women’s rights in sports as it may offend some people but allow pro-Hamas groups to use their services despite, you know, that whole from river to sea, annihilate Israel and Jews thing?

    1. Upstate – EventBrite’s reasoning seems to be: massacre Jewish civilians and cut off babies’ heads – good; protecting women athletes from males using their locker rooms and bathrooms – bad.

      Have we reached peak clown world? I’m having a hard time seeing how it can get any clownier.

      1. OldManFromKS,
        Someone in a comment used the word “bizzarro” world.
        Yeah, that sums it up pretty well.

  2. Bud Light’em. It seems regardless of color, gender or any other woke BS, they do fear the bottom line.

  4. Decades ago Conservatives in the highest positions of the federal government stripped their fellow citizens of all constitutional rights – including First Amendment rights. Any American deemed “constitutionally subversive” – suspected of trying to subvert America’s “constitutional democratic republic” form of government.

    These Americans that were targeted lost all rights and were the targets of the FBI, DOJ and most federal agencies.

    America is really good at punishing the wrong people – we may be the most inept bureaucratic systems on Earth. Although our government servants are good people working in this terrible system.

    Back then the federal Attorneys General created a “List of Constitutionally Subversive Groups & Individuals” and literally destroyed mostly innocent Americans (since our systems are so inaccurate). Many died prematurely, many had their livelihoods totally destroyed, marriages destroyed – many times resulting in premature death. Led by DOJ and the FBI.

    The vast majority of Americans destroyed in the 1950’s were Democrats that never supported constitutionally-subversive policies of any kind. Christian minister Martin Luther King, Jr was on this DOJ blacklist. Women rights supporters were on this DOJ list. Jewish-Americans we’re on this DOJ list. Most supported constitutional due process.

    Fast forward to 2023: today’s Conservative movement literally is “Constitutionally Subversive” – trying to subvert America’s form of government to grab power. Using FBI and DOJ precedent many Conservatives belong on that list.

    Conservatives supported silencing First Amendment rights in the 1950’s but now want a different standard for themselves. Silencing legal First Amendment activity was wrong in the 1950’s also, but Conservatives refuse to own up to their hypocrisy now complaint about their “constitutionally subversive” speech being censored.

    Are any Conservatives honest enough to fess up to this double-standard?

    [Source: Article “Prelude to McCarthyism: the making of a blacklist” published by the National Archives, written by Robert Justin Goldstein 2006).

    1. That is accurate. Now, can we call out the equal dishonesty of the leftists (not true liberals) who championed free speech when theirs was threatened, but now they are ascendant, hold their own double standard?

      2. Ellen – I think Anonymous is right except to the extent Professor Turley’s point about the Twitter files (and Facebook files) proves government censorship by surrogate. The problem is that Professor Turley doesn’t really attempt to demonstrate that the government has pressured EventBrite in the same way. That, in my opinion, is the main weakness in the professor’s argument.

        1. Professor Turley frequently makes weaker arguments than one might think likely. However, my address to this particular member of the Anonymous horde concerned his/her inaccuracy in equating EventBrite with Masterpiece Cake Shop, which deserved correction. I stand by what I posted.

          1. Ellen – I didn’t see that in his argument. I agree this is different than the cake shop case, which I actually anticipated someone would bring up. See my comment below at 9:38 a.m.

            2. Sorry, I was thinking of a different Anonymous and a different reply. Distracted this morning.

              1. No worries, I actually replied (or so I thought) to a different one of your comments, but it unexpectedly showed up tagged to this one. I’ve heard other people complain of that happening.

    2. One rarely meets a conservative who thinks the abuses of the McCarthy era were a good thing. We’ve said so many times, but do you ever listen? Also, how many of the conservatives posting here were even alive at that time? Even if your entire argument were valid, however, all it would amont to is a tu quoque and as such a weak and boring argument.

  5. I grew up in a place with a huge gay population (forget the plus; I still refuse even LGBTQ – it’s dehumanizing, we don’t have to slap a dang label on everything under the sun, we are not computers, and I fail to see the difference from something like using racial epithets), I have known many trans folks over the years and lemme tell you: what we are seeing today is not that, and those folks would never have wanted it to be; that was about a personal crisis of identity, not a lever for personal acquisition in whatever form.

    I really do liken this more to oxycontin given where the money trail leads: a handful of the fragile ultra-rich projecting their inability to cope, arrogance, and entitlement on literally everyone else. The irony of that in contrast to the implied activism on the part of adherents would be hysterical if it weren’t so tragic. We are stupid, stupid people. Season it with Marxist screeds and you now have an ideology AND a methodology. 😐 As a modern issue it was never about what has been claimed.

  6. 20 years ago, if you said to someone that you were banned from a platform or site because you believed only women should compete in women’s events, everybody would look at you funny. Left and right. This is how far our country has gone down the drain mentally and morally. Trans kids are being lied to, they’re being sold a pig in a poke that is not, and never will be, a pig, and by the time they figure it out it will be far too late for them and those in their wake. Meanwhile all the doctors and psychologists will have gotten rich by mutilating and tricking vulnerable people who needed help. Turley is the guy who thought it was just fine for men to compete in women’s chess so that just shows his vast understanding of the topic, however he seems to have landed on the right side of this issue by accident.

  7. Re: “Critics have noted that pro-Hamas groups are allowed to use the site as are radical far left groups.” Hence, intelligent members of the public who know the difference will take care not to polish their shoes with Eventbrite’s product.

  8. Please, Professor Turley, stop using the terms trans woman or trans man. These terms suggest that a man can transition to a woman or a woman can transition to a man merely by declaring it so. In reality, what we have are men pretending to be women and women pretending to be men. I have no objection to such pretending but I do object to going along with the pretending. It is simply physically impossible for a person to change his or her gender, even with deforming surgery or chemical treatments. The people who claim to be trans are mentally ill, and should be treated compassionately, but compassion does not include going along with their delusions.

  9. “The First Amendment is not the exclusive measure of free speech. Corporate censorship of political commentaries or news stories are denials of free speech that harm our democratic system.

    Second, this is a First Amendment violation.”

    Corporate censorship is legal and cannot be a violation of the 1st amendment. The PRIVATE company has every right to choose who it would allow to use their services. They are not required to be neutral either. This is nothing more than professor Turley’s view of requiring a standard that doesn’t exist.

    A private company cannot violate the first amendment if it deliberately tries. It’s not possible.

    “For years, many politicians and pundits have dismissed free-speech concerns by noting that the First Amendment only applies to the government. So long as corporations do the censoring, they contend, it is not a free-speech problem.”

    This is absolutely true. Professor Turley doesn’t explain how this not true. If it was this blog is directly violating the first amendment every day.

    Originalists and constitutional textualists cannot show that the first amendment applies to private companies. Turley is wrong. He just doesn’t like the idea that private companies can and do choose to censor or limit conservative content. They certainly can. If a baker can claim free speech to refuse service to transgender individuals then any private company can argue the same against conservative individuals.

    1. The difference is that Masterpiece Cake Shop and 303 Creative were being pressed to create speech of their own in support of beliefs anathema to their faith. No-one is asking Eventbrite to speak, or to create anything. Merely to serve as a vessel for the speech of others.

      Which is why Jack Phillips was perfectly willing to sell the gay engaged couple a non-specifically created cake, which is essentially what Eventbrite and GoFundMe are refusing to do.

    2. I could agree with the fundamentals of what you point out here.
      But those fundamentals are being artfully perverted into non sequitur justification for the private company to lie on its terms of service.
      Although a private company can set the terms of usage for its platform, it does not have the right to establish terms of usage (which is a form of contract) that are ambiguous by inception, and then then unilaterally claim violation of those terms without justification. This is simple contract law, violations of which are actionable.
      Even from a civil rights discrimination POV, to deny a woman (who is a member of a protected class) the right to speak in defense of women, would be a violation of law.

      1. “Although a private company can set the terms of usage for its platform, it does not have the right to establish terms of usage (which is a form of contract) that are ambiguous by inception, and then then unilaterally claim violation of those terms without justification.”

        It does have the right. This blog has a vague civility rule that allows the removing of comments deemed “in violation” solely at the discretion and interpretation of the webmaster.

        They set the rules of their platform any way they want.

        1. Well they do, and most people don’t complain in any legal sense, but even here someone could call them on it.
          The question is not whether it is actionable, but whether it is worth the time and effort, and what the damages are.
          In the case of Eventbright, and many others, it surely is worth the time, effort and can show provable damages.

        2. To be clear, if the terms of service are clear, and wholly discretionary, then there is no actionable claim.
          If the TOS stated clearly, “We reserve the right to deny service, to edit and censor anything a user posts, at our sole and complete discretion.” Then I would have no issue with it when they do.
          In the Evenbrite case, there were far more explicit representations of engagement and terms made during their contract.
          If Eventbrite made clear those terms, e.g. “We reserve the right to collect money for you, and engage with you, and for any reason whatsoever we decide to end the agreement at our sole discretion.” Then I would have no issue wit h that.
          Of course with terms like that, they may have difficulty engaging with any users/customers.
          But they bait and switch at the last moment.

  10. Discrimination laws and policies, meant to protect minority classes, have been perverted and weaponized, turning what was to be a shield into a sword.
    In libertarian terms, they have turned negative rights into positive rights, which sounds nice but is actually an infringement of the rights of the unprotected class.
    Whereas people had the right to speak his/her mind or wear offensive t-shirts, now the ‘protected’ class is given the power to reach out and silence others on the premise they are being discriminated against by the speech of others.
    To paraphrase a good point — Your right to be free of discrimination ends when your feelings are offended by my freedom of speech.

    1. “Your right to be free of discrimination ends when your feelings are offended by my freedom of speech.”

      That’s a great argument for allowing CRT in classrooms.

  11. Riley Gaines’ stand is not against trans people. It is against men in women’s sports. That isn’t covered in their “non-discrimination” stand.

      1. And you know this because you live in her mind and all her thoughts are heard by you?

          1. Damn Sammy, your evidence that Riley Gaines spouts hate is a link to an AP story where they only person spouting “hate” is the writer of the story. Did you bother going to the Independent Women’s Voice link? https://www.iwv.org/about-us/ Surely that website would have all sorts of evidence of “spouting hate,” right? Of course you didn’t. The entire scope of Riley Gaines efforts are to protect the rights of biological females…period.

            Now unless you have an actual statement by Riley Gaines “spouting hate” that we can debate, then go gaslight somewhere else.

            1. Woman’s Voice is a group against any and all trans individuals. Not specific to sports.

              2. Once again Sammy, this should have been an easy step for you. The link to their website is right there. Instead of providing evidence to prove your claim, your silence is proving once again that you’re a lying SoS. And by the way, you suck at gaslighting too! Bwahahahahahaha!

          2. The only person speaking about anti-trans or being hate is the author of the article, obviously biased.

      2. No. She is for women’s rights.
        Anyone with a degree of common sense knows biological males should not be competing in women’s sports.
        Common sense would have biological males who identify as females to have their own separate division competing against other biological males who identify as females.

  12. This is a capitalist economic nation (at least in the short term) so let conservatives create alternatives and deprive those bowdlerizing sites of income. What is the problem other than entrepreneurs being offered an opportunity. Boycott those sites just as many did to Bud Lite and Ben & Jerry’s. I only see an upside in this in that these partisan companies are showing their true colors just as academia is in the process of proving themselves boiling pots of antisemitism.

  13. I predict commenters will compare this to Jack Phillips and the Masterpiece Cake Shop. There are two relevant distinctions:

    (1) EventBrite is not being asked to engage in expressive conduct that violates an individual’s conscience. It is a platform that allows others to express their views. That makes a big difference for First Amendment purposes.

    (2) There is no concern that Jack Phillips is acting as an agent of the government, or that the government is any any way pressuring him to act as he does.

    Despite these material distinctions, leftist commenters will likely conflate the two situations throughout the day.

    1. “It is a platform that allows others to express their views. ”

      Correct. It’s a private platform that ALLOWS others access to their services according to their rules.

      That’s why they CAN choose to not ALLOWE certain individuals for any reason except where prohibited by law. There’s no law prohibiting private companies from denying services because they are conservative or liberal or by party affiliation.

      1. I agree with you, and I would have even if you hadn’t used all caps. But just so you know your comment did not respond to what I said.

      2. To clarify – my agreement is based on Professor Turley not supplying any evidence that the government pressured EventBrite to censor certain views (a point I acknowledged in a response to Ellen). This distinguishes EventBrite from the old Twitter and FaceBook. As with Twitter, once the company starts talking with the government and censoring at the behest of the government, the whole equation changes.

        1. Professor Turley is against private companies censoring, because he seems to be demanding or wanting to require them to adhere to free speech principles. He implies there’s a standard they must all follow without ever mentioning on whose standard.

          He’s looking to stoke anger on the right because this issue involves a conservative being censored. He’s not really that gung ho about free speech. My comments will certainly get deleted soon, pretty ironic isn’t it.

          1. Your comments will get deleted because you have never had carnal knowledge with women. The gay men dressed in falsies, bad wigs and awful dresses you know in West Hollywood do not count

            😂

  14. Committed Marxists always believe that THEIR censorship is necessary and just. Always. They can’t see the forest for the trees, and never will. Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.

    1. In fairness, this is a view generally shared by censors regardless of political stripe.

  15. Just checked in to get my daily dose of Turley social media influencing/fox talking point workshopping and am laughing so hard at Jon’s thinking his message on free speech isn’t mind boggling tone deaf and cringe worthy given his predilection for censorship, shadow banning and attempted intimidation tactics through right wing trolls here on his blog.

    Carry on. Bahahahahahaha.

    1. Glad you addressed the actual topic of the article. Tu Quoque arguments are weak.

  16. Sounds like a discrimination fight to me. I think it would be time to start pulling licenses to operate in certain states unless there is a more “Inclusive” terms of use. I don’t think that you will get federal help but once again the states may be able to do what the feds, under Biden will not do.
    The net they cast in their terms of service is so wide that virtually anyone would be an offender. Likely drawn from the pages of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

  17. Riley Gaines is not a hate-mongerer. She merely believes, along with most of the world’s population, that men and women are different, and that women’s sports should be for women – not performative simulacra of women and womanhood.

    I have a good deal of sympathy for members of the trans community, and have for decades. But the new trans movement is not about being, as closely as possible, or about living, as a member of the sex you were not born to. It’s about hatred of women as such – we have bearded “women” with penises and testicles proclaiming themselves “true women” and vastly superior AS women to those who have known the actualities of femaleness in the world – including menstruation, fear of the larger, more violent sex, and, in some instances like my own, forcible penetration of an orifice which these “women” will never possess.

    It’s ludicrous and obscene.

  18. So if I want to hold an event to argue that there should be age or cognitive limits for public officials, I would be denied that opportunity because it is intended to “disparage” senile folks like Biden. Got it.

  19. There is no controversy on women’s sports. 99.99% support women competing against women in athletic endeavors.
    There is a small vocal agitating core, the media gives attention to, because they think it divides our nation.

    There is no credible debate about forcing women to compete against men. Only deluded individuals pushing woke agenda items.

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