You haven’t heard the last from Enes Kanter Freedom.
After the former NBA player was ejected and banned from a Sky game during which he got into a verbal altercation with Natasha Cloud, he is now suing the Sky and the City of Chicago for conspiring to violate his First Amendment rights.
Kanter Freedom has been using the WNBA in recent months to draw attention to his view that transgender women should be barred from women’s sports. He went as far as to mock the league and the queer community by claiming to be a woman and declaring for the 2027 WNBA draft.
Kanter claims he was ejected and banned for wearing a shirt that read, “WOMAN noun, adult human female.” Sky principal owner Michael Alter had previously said that Kanter was ejected because security determined he was a potential threat during his altercation with Cloud.
Kanter Freedom’s lawsuit presents him as a victim of an unfair double standard. The complaint says that Cloud was triggered by his T-shirt and launched a “profanity-laced” tirade without being ejected. Meanwhile, Kanter Freedom claims he was ejected for peacefully demonstrating his First Amendment rights and, as he puts it, “protecting women’s sports.”
When asked about the altercation last week, Cloud called Kanter Freedom “irrelevant” and then redirected the conversation to issues women actually need to be protected from, like domestic violence and sexual abuse.
A statement Friday from Alter called the lawsuit “meritless” and “frivolous.”
“Freedom’s claim that he was removed from Wintrust Arena due to this speech is false. As his own complaint acknowledges, he wore the shirt in question for multiple hours without any contact with security. Security removed Freedom only after he violated a code of conduct by rising from his seat, gesturing at a player, and stepping toward the court.”
Latest on the Sky and WNBA
