Los Angeles activists today filed a civil rights lawsuit against companies owned by Rick Caruso that manage the Grove, a 750,000 square foot shopping mall. Rick Caruso is a billionaire real estate developer running for Mayor of Los Angeles. His campaign is headquartered at the Grove, which has also been the site of numerous public events promoting his candidacy.
The Grove is silencing efforts to criticize Caruso’s policies and political platform. For decades, California law has been clear that shopping malls are public spaces that must allow avenues for free expression, without discriminating against a speaker’s viewpoint. Shopping malls are today’s public squares, and Caruso himself has described the Grove as “a Main Street for a City that doesn’t have one.”
Caruso is leveraging his ownership of the Grove to suppress speech critical of his mayoral campaign, while also using the mall’s public spaces to promote his agenda and host large events supporting the campaign. Grove employees even distribute signs promoting Caruso’s campaign to mall visitors and allow them to march around the mall holding up the signs, but any similar expression critical of the campaign is banned.
“It’s becoming a familiar story,” said attorney Matthew Strugar. “A billionaire developer enters politics and celebrates people who praise him while trying to shut down those who criticize him.”
The lawsuit’s plaintiffs Gina Viola, Sim Bilal, and Youth Climate Strike Los Angeles asked the Grove for permission to plan small-scale marches through the Grove’s public thoroughfares this month. The Grove denied the applications at the same time that it facilitates similar speech boosting Caruso’s political agenda.
Gina Viola is an organizer with the LAPC Fails Coalition, a group that educates the public about the failures of the Los Angeles Police Commission (which Caruso has been president of) to address police violence in Los Angeles. Viola ran against Caruso in the mayoral primary, focused on the homelessness crisis and policing. She won nearly 7% of the citywide vote despite her campaign spending just around $50,000, while Caruso spent over $40 million (at least four times as much as all 11 other candidates combined) to place second in the primary, with under 36% of the vote. “Los Angeles is not for sale!” Viola said. “If Rick Caruso was sincere in his call to end homelessness, he could have done that decades ago many times over. In this election he didn’t even show up for the official debate that was devoted to homelessness. He keeps running from and silencing questions he can’t answer.”
Sim Bilal is an organizer with Youth Climate Strike Los Angeles, a group that confronts climate change, environmental racism, and systemic inequality. "Los Angeles is on the frontlines of the climate crisis,” Bilal said. “We witness the devastation of climate inaction every day: pollution is worsening, our kids are developing lifelong health conditions, and wildfires are burning down our neighborhoods. Caruso refuses to even acknowledge the climate crisis in his platform, so of course he won’t allow us to raise this urgent concern. We must not reward his resistance to reality."
“The Grove is part of Rick Caruso’s plan to purchase plutocratic rule of Los Angeles,” said attorney Shakeer Rahman. “In an election where policing and displacement are among the lead issues, this billionaire is illegally using his control over a massive public space to muzzle his critics.”
Not only does the Grove discriminate against speakers based on their views on Rick Caruso, just about all the Grove’s restrictions on speech violate the legal requirements for freedom of expression in malls and similar public spaces. Anyone wishing to exercise their freedom of expression in the Grove must submit a paper application to an office that has been behind a locked door for years; political expression must be limited to 7 people and a 100 square foot corner of the mall (0.00035% of the Grove’s total area), away from nearly all foot traffic; and any fliers or petitions must be individually approved by Caruso’s employees.
The lawsuit can be read here. And you can read our brief asking the court for a preliminary injunction here.