Florida-based Blue Angels sued over free speech rights related to cat's death

Garfield Hylton, Orlando Sentinel on Jul 25, 2025

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The U.S. Navy Blue Angels, based in Pensacola, Florida, are being sued for violating constitutional free speech rights after their performances allegedly terrorized a woman’s pet to death.

On Monday, Lauren Ann Lombardi, of Seattle, filed a lawsuit against the governmental agency, according to WEAR-TV, the ABC affiliate in Pensacola.

Lombardi said Blue Angels demonstrations in August of 2023 and 2024 terrorized her cat and led to its death. She said she called them out on social media to end their demonstrations and claimed the team blocked her in response. The Seattle resident asserted that being blocked was a violation of her First Amendment right.

The lawsuit begins with Lombardi, the plaintiff, describing how the U.S. Navy terrorized her “daughter,” silenced a citizen’s free speech and “brought disgrace upon the uniform.” The “daughter” in question is her pet cat named Layla, who was suffering from a heart condition.

Lombardi described the training exercises as “auditory carpet bombing” and “state-sanctioned acoustic torture.” During the summer of 2024, she cited the noises “overruled (Layla’s) primitive limbic system,” causing the animal to “flee in panic beneath furniture.” Such activity would raise the cat’s breathing to “clinically dangerous levels,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit goes on to say the cat spent its final days marred by “sadistic suffering, cowering in terror beneath furniture while her ailing heart struggled against the Blue Angels’ relentless noise pollution.”

She sent several messages to the @usnavyblueangels Instagram account. She expressed general displeasure by telling them, “Nobody gives a f--- about your stupid little planes.” She left multiple comments on their posts and directed users to sign a Change.org petition titled, “We All Want to Feel Safe: No More Blue Angels Over Seattle.”

The alleged block occurred on Aug. 5, 2023. In response, Lombardi messaged them, calling them cowards.

She’s asking the court to declare the social media block unconstitutional, to enter an injunction preventing them from blocking her or anyone else and to “order defendants to take remedial training on the fundamental importance of the First Amendment, which the brave men and women of the U.S. Navy are sworn to protect.”

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