Comedienne Iliza Shlesinger held a girls-only comedy show and has now been hit with a discrimination suit from a 21-year-old man claiming he was unfairly turned away. His lawsuit begins with a quote from George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," writes attorney Alfred Rava in the 14-page complaint, saying the situation perpetuates a "war on men."
The lawsuit said people would be in an uproar if perhaps a comedian like Andrew Dice Clay, "the bane of feminists," held a show preventing women from entering.
A similar uproar occurred earlier when the movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse held a women-only screening of "Wonder Woman." When former Heat Street writer Stephen Miller attended one of the screenings as a prank, he did not get turned away.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the San Diego-based attorney Rava has "built a career on suing companies for gender discrimination, including filing a class action against the Oakland A's for giving away plaid hats to women at a Mother's Day game in 2004."
The man, whom the lawsuit names St. George, claims that he bought tickets for the November 13 show that was advertised as "Girls Night in with Iliza — No Boys Allowed." After purchasing, he was informed he could only sit in the back row "because of their sex."
"The men decided to leave to grab a bite to eat before returning for the show, and Rava compares what happened when they returned to the racial segregation experienced across the South prior to the civil rights movement," reports THR. "The female employee with whom they had spoken earlier told them Shlesinger and the theater had since decided only women would be admitted to the show and they'd be given a refund. "
Rava says that the theater turning away St. George violates the Unruh Civil Rights Act and California's business and professions code.
"Simply put, it is against many California laws for a business to discriminate against patrons based on their sex or other personal characteristics, such as race or sexual orientation which should surprise no one," writes Rava, arguing the show "repudiated hundreds of years of women's struggles to be viewed as being equal to men and is typical of old-fashioned sexism that might also advise a young woman that her best chance for a happy life is to ace her home economics class and learn how to make a queso dip from Velveeta to catch a good man."​