Snowden's last ramblings

Moved to links forum.

 

Note to Snowden: If you have a lawyer from the ACLU telling you that this is anything less than a slam-dunk for the plaintiff, chances are the case is far from "open and shut".

 

What makes this article so awful is that it's very clear to me it's a hatchet job. He's not trying to inform, he's trying to blast. The article is devoid of nuance from the writer. I mean, the case to him is open and shut. Yet, in many ways it is similar to ticket selling practices at every freakin' college football game for God knows how many years.

In order for the USSF to lose the case, at minimum, the plaintiffs are going to have to win the point that the intent was racial (or national origin), and not based on for whom the fans were going to cheer. Otherwise, it's no different from what NC State fans have to go through to go to a game in Chapel Hill.

 

Is anybody REALLY listening to this guy anyways? There are probably about 30 soccer geeks (myself included) who read the article and that's it.

 

It might be similar, but it's different in an important respect, as you point out. Segregation by team affiliation isn't illegal; segregation by race or national origin is. You seem to think that the USSF could defend itself by asserting that purposely excluding "Fans of the Honduras team" is sufficiently different from excluding Hondurans and Honduran-Americans. Personally, I would not want to be the guy who tries to say that to a court with a straight face.

Besides that, I don't see that it will be difficult for the plaintiffs to show evidence of exclusion based on race or national origin, assuming that some of the stories printed after the game were correct. Hondurans alleged that they called for tickets giving their real, Spanish-sounding surnames and couldn't get tickets, but then called again giving Anglo-sounding names and got tickets. If these allegations are true, it looks like a pretty easy case.