We've long championed the work of The Festival Lawyer, who tirelessly works to keep his fellow festies safe (he may be a lawyer but he can also rave alongside the best of us!) through sage legal advice and advocacy tailored specifically for festival-goers. You may have attended his Fest Law 101 workshop at a festival recently, read his wildly popular Ask The Festival Lawyer series on Fest300, or seen his handy Know Your Rights cards floating around. In short, his advice has always aimed to help festies stay on the right side of the law, despite whatever tricks law enforcement and security at festivals think they have up their sleeves.

This week we received a success story from a longtime Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas headliner. Ethan Genz, a 25-year-old festival veteran from Denver, used info from one of The Festival Lawyer's advice columns to successfully challenge an invasive and unlawful search at EDC last week. Read his Reddit thread below.

When we got in touch with Ethan, we were even more impressed by the many things he did right when he explained further why this experience stuck out above the rest:

"I'd never really experienced searches like the ones at EDC this year; Day 1 was a fairly tame search, but on Day 2 they were hands down the most invasive I'd seen, and everyone was uncomfortable and annoyed...Because of the strictness of the searching, the lines were also moving at a painfully slow pace, so we were missing music we came early for. So after that experience I decided that if the same thing went down on Day 3 I would say something since I knew I would be in the clear in terms of contraband. I wanted to see what would happen if their methods weren't just meekly accepted, and I was hoping it would empower other attendees. When I even had the exact same guard as the day before, AND I saw that the guard next to him wasn't doing invasive searches, I knew it was time to stand up."

We asked the Festival Lawyer for a reaction to Ethan's story, and here's what he said: 

My articles outlining the rights of festival-goers during invasive searches are must-reads for this very type of situation, because the quality and professionalism of the security at an event can have a huge impact on your overall experience. It's exciting to see these tips in action. First of all, Ethan decided to challenge the search at a time when he was calm, sober and was not carrying anything that could be considered contraband.

Second, he not only had read the prior Festival Lawyer article on this topic but had done some of his own legal research. As I've told people many times, you should always make sure to check your own state and local laws to truly understand your rights before a legal situation happens.

Finally, he was polite and respectful with the security guard and when that officer did not act reasonably, he asked for a supervisor. If you find your self in a bad situation, one of the smartest things you can do is to take your dispute up the chain of command. It is also important to note which security guards at festivals are doing things right, as Ethan did.

As I mentioned in the prior article, the whole point of entrance searches is to keep people safe. That means security is supposed to be checking for weapons and other dangerous items. It is not only inappropriate but illegal for festival security to be treating festival-goers like they are "new fish" entering a prison. Searching men's genitals or grabbing women's breasts is NOT okay. You should be walking into a music festival feeling happy and excited. Not violated. A big Festival Lawyer "High Five of Justice" to Ethan for knowing his rights and acting on them in a safe and responsible way.