Flamengo: LGBT+ group seeks multimillion-dollar damages for the team not using shirt 24

The group Arco-Íris de Cidadania LGBT+ has again filed a lawsuit in Rio de Janeiro against Flamengo because of the absence of the shirt 24 for use by players in Copinha.

In the lawsuit, filed on Friday 10, the group accuses the club of “human rights violations” and “homophobia.”

The piece also cites statements by Angela Landim Machado, a Flamengo director, which were deemed prejudiced by the activists.

“We win when you produce, we lose when you’re on vacation,” the woman said on the internet about the 2022 elections. “Let’s get to work because if the cattle die, the tick starves to death.”

So Arco-Íris de Cidadania LGBT+ requested R$1 million in damages.

This is not the first lawsuit raised by the group.

In 2021, the activists demanded a position from Flamengo about the club not using the number 24* in official competitions.

“It should be noted that Flamengo is a private entity, which is not obliged to provide any clarification to the applicant civil association, which, in turn, also has no standing to demand such clarifications, nor to challenge acts and internal affairs of the club,” Flamengo replied at the time.

Moreover, the club noted that “there is no law, rule or regulation that requires the club or its athletes to use the number 24 in the game shirt so that the attempt to impose by the applicant is a blatant affront to the principle of legality, which states that ‘no one will be required to do or refrain from doing something if not by law.

*In Brazil, the number 24 is traditionally associated with being gay. The assumption about the number started with a popular illegal gambling lottery game known as “Jogo do Bicho” (“the Animal Game”), in which each number corresponds to a different animal; the 24 was assigned to the deer (“veado” in Portuguese). The issue, though, is that the slang “viado” is also a common homophobic slur in Brazil.

With information from Revista Oeste