Friday night at Providence Park was Fan Appreciation Night. The Portland Thorns should have specified which fans.
About 20 supporters of female-only sports, organized by activist Amy Sousa and Seattle commentator Brandi Kruse, showed up for the Thorns’ match against the North Carolina Courage wearing shirts from XX-XY Athletics, the company Jennifer Sey founded to fight for sex-based categories in women’s sports. They kept the shirts covered for the first half. When the second half started, they took the covers off and unfurled a banner: “Save Women’s Sports.”
What happened next is on video. Other fans swarmed them. Members of the group say they were screamed at and struck with flagpoles carrying trans pride flags, and the footage backs up at least the chaos. An OutKick reporter filming the scene says his phone was knocked out of his hand, beer was poured on his neck, and a security guard briefly confiscated his press credential while he interviewed Sousa.
Then stadium security made its decision about who the problem was. They removed the XX-XY group. All of it. Video shows a guard walking Kruse out with her arm restrained behind her back after she refused to leave voluntarily. The fans accused of hitting people stayed in their seats.
The Portland Police Bureau wants it known its officers did not do the removing. Off-duty officers working the game only stepped in when some of the ejected fans refused to leave and lay down blocking an exit, and police say those fans then agreed to go. Two cases were logged afterward, alleged harassment and alleged vandalism. No reported injuries, no arrests. Sousa says her group filed police reports.
The club’s explanation is that the group was removed for distributing materials in violation of stadium policy. The fans’ answer to that is two words: they’re lying. The shirts were worn, not distributed, and the banner was displayed, not handed out. A group in similar apparel was reportedly thrown out of a Thorns game in September too, so Portland has now run this play twice.
Here is the part that should worry the Thorns. The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed it is reviewing the incident, and a DOJ spokesperson framed it as raising “viewpoint discrimination and First Amendment questions rather than sex discrimination.” That framing is not accidental. Providence Park is owned by the City of Portland. When a city owns the building, “it is a private venue and we can police viewpoints” gets a lot harder to say with a straight face.
None of this required Portland to agree with the shirts. It required Portland to protect the fans being hit instead of ejecting them. On Fan Appreciation Night, the club appreciated the fans who brought flagpoles to swing at other fans, and it physically removed the fans who got swung at.
Appreciation, Portland style.