Eleven people are stepping up and suing several white nationalists from the deadly Charlottesville, Va., rally, alleging that because of the white supremacists’ threats and violence, they suffered emotional and physical trauma.
On Wednesday, a federal lawsuit was officially filed in Charlottesville and named 25 white nationalist individuals and groups, including national fuckboi Richard Spencer, which, they claim, were involved in the violent Aug. 12 rally. The lawsuit is seeking damages from those individuals and groups and is seeking a court order to ban those individuals and groups from attempting to once again stage similar rallies, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit claims that those individuals and groups who went to Charlottesville did so “to terrorize its residents, commit acts of violence, and use the town as a backdrop to showcase for the media and the nation a neo-nationalist agenda.”
Evan McLaren, the executive director of Spencer’s National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank, called the lawsuit “entirely frivolous,” Reuters reports.
“The political forces opposed to us lack a serious, coherent response to our message and presence, and thus seek to outlaw our ability to speak,” McLaren said in a statement.
The plaintiffs filing the suit say they suffered a great deal as a result of the rally, with one plaintiff suffering a stroke, while two others were injured. Yet others say they suffered psychological and emotional distress when the rally turned violent.
One counterprotester, Heather Heyer, was killed and multiple others were injured after they were run over by a vehicle allegedly driven by James Fields Jr., who has been charged in Heyer’s death and is also named in the lawsuit.
“The whole point of this lawsuit is to make it clear that this kind of conduct—inciting and then engaging in violence based on racism, sexism and anti-Semitism—has no place in our country,” Roberta Kaplan, one of the attorneys heading the suit, told Reuters.
Read more at Raw Story.