Newcastle Fan Launches Legal Action Against Club and Premier League With Help of FSU
Linzi Smith, the Newcastle United fan given a three-season ban for saying allegedly ‘transphobic’ things on X, e.g. “transwomen aren’t women”, is taking legal action against NUFC and the Premier League with the help of the Free Speech Union. The Telegraph has the story.
A football fan who was banned from attending matches after expressing gender-critical views on social media has begun a crowd-funded legal action against Newcastle United and the Premier League.
Linzi Smith was barred by the football club after a “Stasi” spying investigation into her, which detailed where she lives, works, and even where she walks her dog. It was launched after someone wrote to the club accusing her of being transphobic.
The 34-year-old, who is gay and promotes lesbian, bisexual, and women’s rights, has raised £15,000 through a crowdfunding campaign supported by fellow fans and free speech campaigners.
Lawyers fighting her case have now written to the club and the league demanding compensation and an end to the ban. Ms. Smith is prepared to take her case to court if they refuse to comply.
Her legal team says the Premier League club illegally discriminated against her after she expressed legally-protected beliefs that people cannot change their sex.
Levins Solicitors also say the Premier League and the club had no “lawful basis” for snooping on her when a special unit set up to combat racism compiled an 11-page “target profile” dossier on her.
Ms. Smith told the Telegraph: “I always thought we lived in a society where people could express their opinions freely without fear that it could ruin their life. The actions of Newcastle United and the Premier League have had a hugely detrimental effect on me, and it seems that legal action is the only way to ensure that these powerful organisations understand the law and the right that everyone has to freedom of speech.”
Ms. Smith was accused of being transphobic by a complainant who told the football club that trans people would not feel safe sitting near her, even though her posts on X (formerly Twitter) had no connection to Newcastle United.
As first revealed by the Telegraph, the club responded by asking the Premier League to carry out an investigation into Ms. Smith without her knowledge.
The resulting dossier was handed by Newcastle United to Northumbria Police, who then interviewed Ms. Smith under caution.
Officers took just two hours to tell her that she had not committed an offense, but the club, which had spent months looking into her background, revoked her membership and banned her from games until 2026.
She has said the club and the league “have behaved like the Stasi” and that she feels “violated”.
Ms. Smith, who runs a tea shop with her mother, had posted tweets in which she suggested the trans lobby was homophobic because it wanted to “trans the gay away” and that some transgender people were suffering from mental illness.
She is being helped in her legal action by the Free Speech Union, which helped to organise the crowdfunding campaign.
Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “For Newcastle to punish a fan for saying she thinks sex is biological and immutable — a view 99 per cent of their fans and 100 per cent of the club’s owners agree with — is a grotesque interference in free speech.
“The sooner they apologise and reinstate Linzi, the better. If Newcastle fights this, the club and its owners will be universally ridiculed. The club should focus on winning games, not winning last year’s woke argument.”
Worth reading in full.
You can donate to Linzi’s crowdfunder here.
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Well done Toby, the FSU Team and Linzi. Best of luck with the case.
Newcastle F C should be ashamed of themselves. I hope it costs them hugely.
Absolutely. NUFC behaving disgracefully. 100% behind Linzi in this because she’s done nothing wrong, unless demonstrating common sense and an understanding of Micky Mouse level biology is now a crime. Queer Theory is anti-gay and anti-straight, popularized by weirdos. Gender does not exist on a spectrum. That way lies madness. Anyone teaching this wants to turn you into an abomination.
The jobsworths are still turning up at people’s houses though, for posting or sharing something deemed ‘offensive’ to ‘those who must not be offended’. Lawrence Fox is conveniently at these guy’s house, as one of them is to be arrested ( 4mins );
https://twitter.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1784280380163375457
The really disturbing thing with this nonsense is that the Police felt it necessary to send two Police Creatures (I cannot say they are people when what they are doing is beyond human comprehension, and I can’t think of another word right now), and follow it up with another squad car.
Why? They clearly did not know. “We’ve been told to” is not an excuse for breaking the law in the, loosely alleged, pursuit of upholding the law. Once again, a case against the Police that should be heard in Court.
“Levins Solicitors also say the Premier League and the club had no “lawful basis” for snooping on her when a special unit set up to combat racism compiled an 11-page “target profile” “
This is truly disturbing. By what authority did the Premier League and Newcastle F C deem it within their rights to conduct what was clearly a privacy breaching investigation into this young woman’s personal life? On this point alone the police should be initiating a criminal investigation.
So the football league consider it within their remit to investigate the private lives of anybody they choose or is it just any name forwarded to them by a football club? How many football leagues would that encompass?
Plod can prosecute for silently praying but blatant overreach and criminality by the football league and members of same gets a free pass.
Rotten Britain.
What would be really awesome and helpful would be if any of the players could speak up about this in Linzi’s defense. But we know that’s never going to happen because they’ll have been warned to keep schtum if they want to keep their place on the team and their big, fat salary. More people with clout need to speak up about this lunacy. But you do not prioritize the crazy woke agenda over your loyal fans. Just insane.
Off-T.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/wef-98-percent-central-banks-replace-paper-money-digital-cash/5855854
CBDC’s may be imminent.
I still believe a financial collapse will be engineered round about the time of Billy’s new release.
Expect an article by Anonymous IT Reporter allaying any concerns.
Meanwhile, a banking app I have now tries to categorise spending (entertainment etc.) and asks the user to categorise/re-categorise payments to improve accuracy. That data could be used across multiple accounts.
Of course, the cash payments are a big black hole it can’t do anything with.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of these short dystopian films. They’re only a few mins long. I was so impressed with this guy and his narration is spot on, in my opinion. So young yet so astute and talented. He did all these ( you can see the series in the description below the vid ) during the lockdowns. This one is about a cashless society;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPMnXRWD0Ac&ab_channel=CrossingChannel
Thanks Mogs. It’s good to see youth alive to our predicament.
They have been pushing CBDCs in Nigeria & India but its not going that well, fortunately.
Yes, I believe so. It’s good to know there is pushback.
Doesn’t get my support I’m afraid. I won’t cherry pick in deciding when I think promotion of non-hetrosexual and non-traditional families are a major problem or not. It’s her ilk that have been a significant contributor to the weird nonsense that is tearing society apart. It’s fine not to be heterosexual, just go about your business quietly like the rest of us do. Sexual orientation is not to be promoted, and it’s the promotion of it, by people like her, that are ruining children’s lives and leading us all into the abyss.
I get where you are coming from and you make sense but I had to down mark overall. Over the years it has been necessary for activists (and your membership here makes you one maybe?) to fight for rights. That can’t always be done quietly; ask the Suffragette killed at Aintree all those years ago.
However, do I think it is time it was all toned down? Most definitely yes. “Rights” has long meant “more rights than the rest” and that can never be condoned. However, in this case, she also fights for “womens” rights and they are fast being eroded by the very cause which led her to be banned.
Is there a right and a wrong view in all of this? Probably not. All we can do is cling to “free speech” and the associated laws until, of course, Labour change them when they get into power.
Crikey, if you’re a guy AND you’re sticking up for women’s rights, as opposed to continually disparaging and scapegoating us, you are indeed in the minority around here.👍😁
But I get what you mean about “rights”. I feel that many groups are fighting for rights they already have, given that they’re included in the umbrella term “human rights”. In fact, ALL groups ( given that we’re all humans ) are having our freedoms threatened and assaulted just now so division is hardly the best approach if we’re to tackle the BS they’ve got in store for us as a united front. We have a common enemy, but certain people seem to forget that and play the blame game, which plays right into TPTB’s hands, as a society at war and bickering amongst eachother, with a total lack of social cohesion, is a populace that’s much easier to conquer and control.
I just wish people would “stop and smell the roses” a bit more and lay off being so militant and combative a bit. Be assertive but enjoy life at the same time.
Seconded Mogs 👍
I’m going to try to reply without kicking off another sh*tstorm, which, honestly, isn’t my intention. It seems crystal clear to me what the common enemy actually is – who it is that’s causing the division: all victim-card holders. We can’t attack one victim groups agenda and ideology, while giving loving hugs to another – not rationally, and without hypocrisy, anyway. Society needs to be about everyone putting down their cards and coming together. We can acknowledge that mistakes have been made in the past – that pretty much everyone in society has been the victim of discrimination at some point (with some shouting louder than others) – but learn from that and have a clear understanding that dividing society into victim groups is the most societally damaging way to address any inequalities and/or prejudices. To truly unite we can’t give special treatment to one victim-card group (arguably the mother of all modern-day victim-card groups), we also need that group to join us in agreeing that, although most these groups may have started with good intentions, the approach only ever delivers one societal result – mass division. It serves no purpose for every single contributor on here to avoid certain… Read more »
I wasn’t actually focusing on women’s rights being the main problem here, although that particular victim group is certainly part of the victim card problem. My point, which I obviously didn’t make as clear as I should have, is the group of victim card holders that promote non-hetrosexual attraction – and the key word here is ‘promote’ – are the very same people who have unleashed an epidemic of deviant sexual appetites. These are the people that are destroying childhood and will cause an avalanche of suicides, mental health issues, and utterly broken lives. They are very much part of the snake that’s now so busy eating its tail. The defence on here seems to be that she should be entitled to free speech because that’s our common enemy, but that argument misses the point: free speech fell exactly because of cult-like groups like hers manipulating, then policing, opinion and debate. For example, one critical debate that was silenced was “is it healthy to promote non-hetrosexual attraction to children?”. I’m not going to watch a growing horde throwing bricks through windows and setting houses alight, only to applaud that horde when a splinter group starts throwing bottles at their own… Read more »
There is plenty of heterosexual attraction to children, especially when you consider a ‘minor’ is anyone under 18. Probably not a popular comment either, but this is all about free speech.
Isn’t the point that if ‘they’ can do this to her over this issue and get away with it, they can do it to you and get away with it over some other issue?
Yes.
But the left are the biggest hypocrites though. My favourite was when Trump was kicked off Twitter….”Well a private company can do what it likes”….Now Musk comes along talking about free speech and they throw their toys out!
Great video exposing Greta with speech analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsW2ObSIiyI
Why does Toby say “expressing gender critical beliefs” when “for telling the truth” is far simpler? In my view this case must be taken to Court: the Club has no legal right to snoop on her dog walking habits let alone anything else. Who do they think they are – a Labour Council?
Beliefs are religion. The word should be avoided in all other contexts. In any case two sexes is a matter of fact, not belief or opinion.
If transwomen are women, why do they call themselves transwomen and not just women?
“… a complainant who told the football club that trans people would not feel safe sitting near her…”
Does the complainant represent ‘trans people‘ – did they have an election? (Which brings up the question: what is a trans person? From what have they ‘transed’ to supposedly become a person but not a person?)
Given the microscopic proportion of the population who have this trans thing, and an even nano-proportion of those being Newcastle United fans, what’s the chance anyone of them might be seated ‘near’ her among tens of thousands of people, how would she know about them and how would they recognise her or know her opinions?
The real problem isn’t the trans-loonies it’s the alleged ‘adult’ normal people who take this bilge seriously instead of telling them to get lost.
The current owners of Newcastle United? Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, otherwise known as the Public Investment Fund (PIF), majority owns Newcastle United. PIF’s chairman is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is also the Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia.
What is their view of transgenderism?
Good luck.
I hope she wins (and then sues them for defamation).