Activists Shame Facebook For Sponsoring Brett Kavanaugh Dinner

Jennifer Bendery

WASHINGTON ― Activists stood outside Facebook’s office in Washington, D.C., on Friday and handed out flyers shaming the tech firm for sponsoring a Federalist Society gala that honored Supreme Court justice and alleged sexual assaulter Brett Kavanaugh.

Demand Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group, passed out 400 flyers to Facebook employees and other passersby. The handbills featured Kavanaugh’s face, along with the faces of accuser Christine Blasey Ford and Facebook executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, and screamed in all caps at the top, “Facebook is taking Brett Kavanaugh’s side again.”

The group is going after Facebook for its “Gold Circle” sponsorship ― the highest level listed ― of an annual Federalist Society gala that this year honored Kavanaugh. The conservative lawyers’ group had helped Kavanaugh, one of its members, get his high court seat. Last week, the justice spoke at the group’s Antonin Scalia Memorial Dinner.

“In funding Brett Kavanaugh’s redemption tour, Facebook’s leaders have chosen profits over survivors,” Katie O’Connor, senior counsel for Demand Justice, told HuffPost. “Facebook employees who disagree with that choice need to speak up, and they need to do it now. Until there is justice for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, we will be holding people accountable when they use their power to rehabilitate Kavanaugh.”

Here’s an image of the flyer:

The Demand Justice flyer criticizing Facebook for sponsoring a Federalist Society gala honoring Brett Kavanaugh. (Photo: Demand Justice)
The Demand Justice flyer criticizing Facebook for sponsoring a Federalist Society gala honoring Brett Kavanaugh. (Photo: Demand Justice)

Demand Justice’s latest activism comes a week after it ran ads with the same message, mostly on LinkedIn and targeted at Facebook employees, and set up camp outside the Federalist Society event in Washington. There, the group put up a massive video billboard that aired Ford’s Senate testimony ― on a loop, for hours ― in which she accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school.

To the delight of activists, the line to get into the dinner was at a standstill for well over an hour, which meant hundreds of attendees in tuxedos and fur coats had to stand there with the giant screen in plain view. Just feet away, a few dozen protesters were chanting “Shame!” and “Hey hey, ho ho, Kavanaugh has got to go!”

A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on Demand Justice’s protests.

Facebook has supported the Federalist Society, both the organization and its annual dinner, since at least 2013. It has also supported the American Constitution Society, the ideological counterpart of the Federalist Society, for the same period of time.

At least one person has quit Facebook over the controversy: rock legend Neil Young. Between the social media giant’s sponsorship of the Federalist Society event and “the false information regularly supplied to the public on Facebook, with its knowledge,” Young said it was time to delete his Facebook artist page.

Demand Justice plans to run more ads aimed at shaming other Gold Circle sponsors of the Federalist Society gala, including the law firms Consovoy McCarthy, Gibson Dunn, Kasowitz Benson Torres, Kirkland & Ellis, Sullivan & Cromwell, and WilmerHale.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.