Portland Thorns Fans Got Hit With Pride Flags and Now the Justice Department Is Involved

Portland Thorns security already threw the same women out of Providence Park in September.

This time stadium security hit them with transgender pride flags instead of a warning card.

Now the Justice Department wants to know exactly what happened inside that stadium.

Security Hit Fans With Pride Flags During the Second Ejection

About twenty fans hid their XX-XY Athletics shirts through the first half of a Portland Thorns match against the North Carolina Courage at Providence Park.

They waited until the second half to reveal the shirts and unfurl a Save Women's Sports banner.

Footage reviewed by OutKick shows group members struck with flagpoles carrying transgender flags.

Security confronted them with profanity before removing them from the stadium.

Organizer Amy Sousa described the scene bluntly: "We were attacked by fans. We were hit with flags."

Commentator Brandi Kruse, also removed, said a guard pinned her arm behind her back.

OutKick reporter Matt Calkins, who covered the ejection in person, said a guard slapped his phone out of his hand, doused him in beer, and briefly confiscated his media credential.

Off-duty police officers were working the game, but the Portland Police Bureau says they stayed out of the removals entirely and only stepped in later, after some of the group blocked a stadium exit.

Officers ultimately opened two separate investigations, one for harassment and one for vandalism.

Nobody ended up in handcuffs, and nobody left with a citation.

Justice Department officials say the matter is now on their desk for a full look.

A separate DOJ official said the conduct raises viewpoint discrimination and First Amendment questions rather than a sex discrimination claim.

Former competitive gymnast Jennifer Sey started the XX-XY Athletics brand on one core argument: men and women do not belong in the same athletic category.

That same group wearing XX-XY gear was ejected from a nearby sports bar hours after the September stadium incident, that time for the shirts alone.

Weeks earlier, the WNBA and the Atlanta Dream had already conceded that security was wrong to make a mother and daughter cover matching shirts worn in support of Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham.

Two leagues in two different sports have now faced scrutiny over the identical enforcement pattern.

Providence Park Already Ejected This Same Group in September

The Portland Thorns ejected this same group once already in September, during an earlier match against the Washington Spirit.

Staff cited the stadium's Code of Conduct and gave themselves 72 hours to follow up with the group about whatever penalty came next.

Anyone who declined to hand over personal information on the spot risked being banned from Providence Park altogether.

A local LGBT group organizer named Hannah Perry had already messaged Portland police, the mayor, and Gov. Tina Kotek pushing for the group's removal before a single guard ever approached them.

Perry went further in a direct message to Sousa, calling her a "pathetic excuse of a human being."

A Thorns spokesperson later claimed the group was removed for distributing unapproved materials, a claim Sousa flatly disputed, insisting they had handed out nothing at all.

The NWSL's Fan Code of Conduct bars political campaigning or advocacy imagery, but neither the league nor the venue has ever spelled out where ordinary apparel crosses that line.

That gap leaves the call entirely up to whichever guard is working the gate that night.

Why a City-Owned Stadium Changes the Legal Calculus

Providence Park belongs to the City of Portland, even though a private operator runs the building day to day.

That single fact changes everything about this case.

A private business can eject a customer over a T-shirt slogan without ever touching the Constitution.

A government-owned venue enforcing a viewpoint-based ban through its security staff is a different animal entirely.

Name the stakes plainly.

If stadium staff carried out that ejection as an extension of city-owned property policy, a federal civil rights statute covering actions taken under color of law comes into play.

The DOJ official's framing backs that up directly, pointing at viewpoint discrimination rather than the sex discrimination angle most headlines assumed.

Two ejections of the same women in two months is not a coincidence.

It is a pattern, and patterns are exactly what federal civil rights reviews exist to examine.

RAJ Sports owns the Thorns, and the club has never offered these fans a public explanation beyond a vague code-of-conduct citation.

Peregrine Sports operates the building on the city's behalf, which means Portland taxpayers are footing the bill for whatever enforcement decision lands the club in federal court.

The Thorns front office built a vague conduct policy, pointed security guards at a specific viewpoint, and is now finding out that a city-owned stadium cannot enforce one set of rules for pride banners and another for Save Women's Sports banners.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon runs the Civil Rights Division that just inherited this file, and she has built her career going after exactly this kind of viewpoint-based enforcement by a government-tied venue.

Providence Park picked the wrong federal division to hand a case this clean.

Sources:

• Mariane Angela, "DOJ Reviews Portland Thorns Ejection of 'Save Women's Sports' Fans," Breitbart, October 25, 2026.
• Alejandro Avila, "Group of Fans Kicked Out of Portland Thorns NWSL Match Over 'Transphobic,' 'Pro-Women' Apparel," OutKick, September 6, 2026.
• Alejandro Avila, "Fans Disagree With Portland Thorns Over Reason for Ejection in XX-XY Apparel Dispute: 'They Are Lying,'" OutKick, September 7, 2026.
• Mariane Angela, "Portland Women's Sports Bar Ejects Patrons Over XX-XY Athletics Shirts," Breitbart, September 8, 2026.