Exercising their constitutional rights, Zuffa filed a lawsuit along with several MMA fans and fighters including Jon Jones, Frankie Edgar, Gina Carano and Matt Hamill on Tuesday U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York against state attorney general Eric Schneiderman and Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
Zuffa attorney, Barry Friedman explained to Yahoo! Sports that the reasons given for banning MMA events in New York are a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendmants. Friedman stated:
“They banned it because they thought MMA conveyed a message of violence. We don’t think that is the message that MMA conveys. I just spent the last few days with a lot of fighters and I spent a lot of time with them over the last few months. They will, as you can see in the complaint, talk about a lot of other values that are present [in MMA] like discipline, courage and respect for an opponent…. But even if violence was the message, New York still can’t ban MMA because it doesn’t like that message.”
“On safety, what they’re saying is, ‘You can’t do this because it’s not safe. Any time the government says you can’t do something that involves your liberty, that is a 14th Amendment claim because it is denying people of their life or liberty without due process. And it’s also a discrimination claim… Why ban mixed martial arts as unsafe when the data shows it’s at least as safe, or safer than a lot of other sports, like boxing, football, ice hockey, Alpine skiing, equestrian sports? It turns out the most dangerous thing you can do is be a flyer in cheerleading. So you ask, what parts of the Constitution cover that, and it’s the equal protection clause.”
The man has a point.