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Enes Kanter Freedom has filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Sky.
In a 15-page complaint filed Thursday in the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, Freedom alleges the WNBA team violated his First Amendment rights by removing him from a Sky home game on Aug. 23 and handing him an indefinite ban from Chicago’s home games at Wintrust Arena.
The city of Chicago and Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which owns and operates Wintrust Arena, were also named as defendants in the lawsuit.
The complaint, obtained by Front Office Sports, says the former NBA player poses “no danger or immediate threat to public safety.” It also says the three defendants “conspired to eject Plaintiff Freedom from the game.”
Freedom is asking a judge to lift his ban and award him nominal compensatory damages. The Sky and the city of Chicago did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The MPEA declined to comment on the litigation, then provided a statement that reads, in part:
“The agreement between MPEA and the Chicago Sky gives the Chicago Sky uninterrupted exclusive access to and from the arena, including ingress and egress, on days of Chicago Sky games. Accordingly, the Chicago Sky controls whether any individual, including Enes Freedom, may access Wintrust Arena on Chicago Sky game days. The Chicago Sky informed MPEA that Enes Freedom was removed from the arena and banned from future Chicago Sky events because he violated rules imposed by the WNBA. MPEA employees were not involved in those decisions.”
“You don’t have to agree with my speech but you don’t get to silence me for it,” Freedom wrote Thursday on X/Twitter alongside a screenshot of the first page of his lawsuit.
Reached by FOS, the city of Chicago said it has not been served with the complaint and does not comment on pending litigation. On Friday, the Sky issued the following statement:
“We received word that the entity owning the Chicago Sky is being sued by Mr. Enes Kanter Freedom for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights. This lawsuit is meritless and frivolous.
“Freedom’s claim that he was removed from Wintrust Arena due to his speech is false. As his own complaint acknowledges, he wore the shirt in question for multiple hours without any contact with security. Security removed Freedom only after he violated fan code of conduct by rising from his seat, gesturing at a player, and stepping toward the court.
“Freedom was removed for his conduct, not his speech. We look forward to the truth prevailing in court.
“At the advice of our legal counsel, given that there is now pending litigation, we will have no further public comments on the matter outside of the courtroom.”
Freedom was removed from the game between the Sky and Indiana Fever after a verbal altercation with Sky guard Natasha Cloud in the third quarter. The two appeared to exchange words before Freedom stood up from his courtside seat on the baseline and took a step toward Cloud.
The complaint stated Cloud “charged toward” Freedom, while he stood in “confusion and disbelief.”
Freedom was quickly blocked by security before being escorted out of Wintrust Arena by Chicago police.
Last week, Sky owner Michael Alter told reporters, including FOS, that Freedom was indefinitely banned from attending Sky home games. He also said the decision to remove Freedom from the arena was jointly made by arena security, NBA security, Chicago Sky security, Indiana Fever security, and the Chicago Police Department.
“The security people’s job is not to wait until a threat intensifies. … We had five different security authorities all agree very quickly that there was no alternative but to throw him out because he made himself into a threat,” Alter said.
Over the last few months, Freedom has declared his desire to play in the WNBA, challenging the WNBA’s gender eligibility rules by claiming he identifies as a woman. His statements came after Fever guard Sophie Cunningham said in an ESPN story in July that she wants to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
Before appearing at the Sky game late last month, the 34-year-old had used social media and media outlets to push his agenda.
FOS reported last week that Freedom and Royce White, a second former NBA player claiming to want to join the WNBA, are not eligible to play in the women’s basketball league.
Cloud spoke to reporters, including FOS, for the first time since the incident on Saturday ahead of the Sky’s road game in New York and refused to acknowledge Freedom, calling him an “irrelevant person.”
She added that she believes the culture war surrounding the WNBA is an “international distraction” from more pressing social issues, particularly with the U.S. midterm elections coming in November.
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