Kyle Rittenhouse loses bid to toss out lawsuit by family of slain Kenosha protester

A Wisconsin federal judge has shot down bids by Kyle Rittenhouse and local law enforcement to toss out a wrongful death lawsuit by the family of slain Kenosha protester Anthony Huber.

Huber’s father, John Huber, filed suit in 2021, claiming Rittenhouse, 20, conspired with law enforcement to harm protesters during major unrest in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020.

The suit also names the Kenosha police, sheriff’s departments and local government, who had attempted, along with Rittenhouse, to get the case thrown out.

Federal Judge Lynn Adelman, however, found that she couldn’t dismiss the suit at such an early stage, ruling it must play out further in court.

“This is not the stage of a civil case at which a court weighs evidence or decides whether the plaintiff is likely to be able to prove his allegations,” Adelman’s Wednesday ruling states. “Rather, so long as the facts alleged by the plaintiff are not fantastic or delusional, the court must accept them as true.”

Rittenhouse was 17 when he traveled from Illinois to Kenosha with a semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he claimed was an effort to protect businesses from looters as riots broke over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man who was left paralyzed from the waist down.

In a caught-on-video melee, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, was killed by Rittenhouse — who was fleeing as he was rushed by demonstrators. Rittenhouse then shot Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, and Anthony Huber, 26, as he was running away.

Afterward, Rittenhouse put his hands up to surrender to the police — but the cops drove past him.

In November 2021, Rittenhouse was acquitted in a criminal homicide case and has maintained the shootings were in self-defense.

John Huber lawyer Anand Swaminathan hailed the judge’s decision to allow the lawsuit to proceed, saying the ruling “puts Anthony’s family one step closer to justice for their son’s needless death.”

“The Kenosha officials that created a powder keg situation by their actions tried to claim that they cannot be held accountable for their unconstitutional conduct; that argument was soundly rejected,” Swaminathan told The Post by email Thursday.

“The lawsuit will proceed to discovery, allowing full transparency into the events of that fateful and tragic evening.”

Rittenhouse’s lawyer Shane Martin said they disagreed with the decision but declined to say whether they would appeal.

“Although this ruling allows the case to proceed for now, it does not change the facts as most of America fully understands,” Martin said. “The only reason Kyle came into contact with Anthony Huber that night is that Huber struck Kyle on the head with a skateboard and knocked him to the ground while Kyle was fleeing a mob of other attackers and running toward Kenosha police to turn himself in.

“There simply was no conspiracy between Kyle and the Kenosha police to single out Anthony Huber and as one jury has already found, Kyle’s actions that night were not wrongful and were taken in self-defense,” the lawyer concluded.

The Kenosha Sheriff’s Office, the Kenosha police and the other government defendants didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

With Post wires