FSU Member and passionate Newcastle United Football Club (NUFC) fan Linzi Smith was a guest on Kevin O’Sullivan’s Talk TV show, to discuss why she’s taking legal action against NUFC and the Premier League having been banned from attending St James’s Park for three seasons. Her ‘crime’? Expressing her legally protected gender critical beliefs online.
The fact that Linzi was prevented from supporting her beloved team in this way is bad enough. But we’ve also discovered a shadowy investigation unit with an opaque remit embedded within the Premier League that spied on her at NUFC’s behest.
This Stasi-style investigation into her allegedly ‘transphobic’ wrongthink detailed where she lives, works, what parts of the country she has connections to, and even where she walks her dog — chillingly, the dossier describes her as “the target”.
It was following receipt of this report that NUFC took the decision to ban Linzi from the stadium.
With our help, Linzi has appointed solicitors who have written a pre-action protocol letter to the club and the Premier League, demanding compensation and an end to the ban. We’ve set a response deadline of 24th May.
Now she needs your support to pursue the case further.
As you can imagine, this is a David and Goliath situation, as both organisations are well-funded and will have strong legal representation. If you believe in freedom of expression and want justice for Linzi, please donate at the link below.
No service provider or membership association should wield such power, and the purpose of Linzi’s legal action is to ensure that she is duly compensated for the infringement of her rights under the Equality Act and the Data Protection Act, and the harm she’s suffered as a result.
These are hugely important issues and in launching this legal action Linzi is standing up for the speech rights of ALL football supporters.
At the FSU, we fear that what happened to her isn’t some one-off aberration, but constitutes part of a wider trend that may now have affected thousands of fans. In March 2022, the Premier League itself admitted it had carried out 400 investigations.
If you think this unit might have opened a file on you — and perhaps passed on that information to the Premier League club you support — please make use of our new automated form to submit a Subject Access Request (SAR) to both your club and the League to see what information it’s holding on you.
If you discover there is a file on you, let us know and we’ll do our best to get it deleted.
