Julie Lane had already been struck by a Portland Thorns fan, sending her tumbling over two rows of seats. The Bay Area resident was one of about 20 people at Friday’s National Women’s Soccer League game wearing XX-XY Athletics shirts and holding a “Save Women’s Sports” sign.
The demonstration drew verbal and physical backlash from other spectators, prompting Providence Park security to remove Lane and the rest of the group. So you could understand why, after all that, Lane would just want to get back to her hotel.
Unfortunately for her and three other women, a Lyft driver made this much harder than it needed to be.
After picking up the quartet from the stadium, the driver asked the group, “are you the ladies from the news?” Thinking he was on their side, Linda Serbu answered with an enthusiastic yes.
That, according to Lane, is when the driver pulled over and told them to get out.
He said “it’s my own private car, and I can cancel any ride I want to, and you don’t belong in my car,” Lane said.
Keep in mind that most of these women were over 50. Serbu had a walker that the driver loaded up in the trunk. But none of them had any idea where they were when he told them to get out. And Lane? Lane refused to leave the vehicle.
There were two reasons for her resistance.
The first is that she paid for a ride and didn’t feel as though she had done anything wrong. This, essentially, was a driver ejecting them for their political views and fashion choices. The second is that she felt genuinely unsafe. These women weren’t being chucked next to a shopping mall in broad daylight. According to Lane, it was “a dark corner of Portland.”
Nevertheless, the driver called the police with the intention of having the ladies arrested for trespassing if they were still in his car. He admitted as much in a Reddit post, where he described the women as “anti-trans agitators.” Lane welcomed the police call, saying “please go ahead and get the cops here. I’d love to talk to them about this.” But they were gone before any of Portland’s finest showed up.
Another woman ordered an Uber, which arrived a few minutes later and took the group to its destination. This happened as Lane was on the phone with a Lyft support representative, who said the driver was going to be disciplined. But much to Lane’s surprise the next morning — as she was awaiting a scheduled Lyft ride — she discovered that Lyft had deactivated her account.
Asked for comment on the whole ordeal, a Lyft spokesperson wrote the following in an email to OutKick.
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“Everyone deserves to feel safe and respected on the Lyft platform, and discrimination of any kind has no place in our community. Our Safety team was in contact with both the rider and the driver involved and we are continuing to review the incident.”
The driver’s actions may also have violated Portland city regulations. Under Section 16.40.280(C)(13) of the city code, rideshare drivers are prohibited from refusing to transport passengers of “proper demeanor” to destinations within Portland after accepting their rides.
But he doesn’t seem to feel an ounce of remorse, with his Reddit post reading like a 380-word back pat. He lamented that it took security more than 15 minutes to eject the XX-XY crowd from the stadium, and wrote “Please address this by making better efforts to keep fans safe at Providence Park, especially those in the LGBTQ + community.”
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Serbu found that line ironic.
“He admits that he kicked us out for our T-shirts and our, quote, ‘anti-LGB activism,’ or something. And just to clarify, we were two lesbians and two bisexual women,” she said.
Probably a safe bet that none of these women will be moving to Portland any time soon. Even after leaving the stadium, they were met with incessant boos and middle fingers from Thorns fans.
A Lyft driver bouncing them from his car for expressing a viewpoint the vast majority of Americans agree with was the final indignity.