Civil rights suit over Palestinian flag dismissed
A Houston woman who was removed from her seat at the Dynamo stadium last year after waving a Palestinian flag during an international soccer match has had her federal civil rights lawsuit dismissed.
Palestinian-American Buthayna Hammad was attending the Honduras v. Israel game in June 2014 at BBVA Compass Stadium when a venue security official told her she could not continue to wave her nation’s flag and called the banner a “racial slur” that might offend the Israeli team and its supporters.
Hammad, who was represented by lawyers with the Texas Civil Rights Project, sued in hopes of changing the stadium’s policies.
“We are disappointed in the outcome of the case,” one of those attorneys, Amin Alehashem, said Wednesday. “We are still evaluating whether we are going to appeal the ruling.”
Not based on heritage
The original defendants included Dynamo Stadium LLC, the venue’s tenant and manager, stadium security director Nathan Buchanan and four unnamed Houston Police Department officers.
In August, after taking depositions from Hammad and Buchanan, lawyers for the stadium and its security director asked U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas to dismiss the case. The officers, who were never identified, were excluded as defendants in October.
Last week, Atlas agreed with a request for summary judgment and ended the lawsuit.
In a 42-page order, the judge ruled that Dynamo Stadium LLC and Buchanan are “private actors” whose association with the Harris County Houston Sports Authority — a government entity — is not “sufficiently entwined” to consider them state actors or designees.
“To survive summary judgment, plaintiff must demonstrate a genuine issue of material fact that HCHSA was involved in defendants’ actions to prevent her from waving her Palestinian flag at the match,” the ruling said.
In deposition testimony, Hammad said she was targeted because of her flag and not her ethnicity.
Atlas further determined that the plaintiff failed to present evidence that the defendants acted based on her heritage, a ruling that killed most of the lawsuit’s civil rights claims.
“There was no evidence of the government actually being involved in this incident,” said Nancy Wells Hamilton, one of three lawyers with the Jackson Walker law firm’s Houston office who represented the defendants. “Nor was there any evidence that the stadium personnel were enforcing any city ordinance.”
The defendants had argued that officials spoke to Hammad because of her flag and not her ethnicity — one basis of discrimination under federal law. “There was no evidence that the stadium personnel were aware of her race and nationality,” Hamilton said. “There were no violations of her civil rights.”
‘Heighten awareness’
Asked whether BBVA Compass Stadium management has changed any policies, procedures or training based on the incident or the lawsuit, Hamilton said she had “no answer for that.”
Alehashem said he doesn’t believe the organization has made such changes but hopes people are treated “in a gentler fashion in the future.”
Despite the dismissal, he thinks there was value in filing a lawsuit to “heighten awareness about culture issues” in a city populated by people from across the globe.
“It’s important to treat people, even if they’re different, with respect,” Alehashem said. “If you don’t know that they’re necessarily a culprit, treat them with respect instead of like instigators or problems.”