In April, thousands of Post Malone fans flocked to Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City to witness the singer kick off his first-ever stadium tour.
It was a dream come true for many of those fans, but not for 27-year-old Ison Sewell of Cokeville, Wyoming, who wasn’t able to make it to the stadium.
“That memory was robbed from me,” Sewell told The Salt Lake Tribune through an American Sign Language interpreter. “I will never have that.”
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in late August, Sewell alleges the University of Utah violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to help him obtain disability-accessible seating and an interpreter for the show.
“As a deaf person, I’m really quite traumatized from having so many events that they don’t have access,” Sewell said. “So I was taking this one very seriously.”
A University of Utah spokesperson declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
(Ison Sewell) Ison Sewell and his wife, Ellie, at a Post Malone Concert in Utah in September 2024 at Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre.
Sewell, who is bilingual in English and ASL, considers himself a “huge fan” of Malone’s, following the rapper-turned-country star’s career for nine years with his wife, Ellie. His favorite song is “Killed A Man” from the singer’s breakout country album, “F-1 Trillion.”
“We’re the biggest fans,” Sewell said. “We listen to his music all the time and so we decided we wanted to just [as an] award for ourselves, go to his concert.”
Malone is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
The court filing details Sewell’s multiple attempts to get in contact with the University of Utah’s ticket office to purchase ADA seats.
First, according to the filing, he tried to get ADA tickets online on Nov. 11 of last year — six months before the concert. Sewell alleges he wasn’t able to purchase the tickets online.
He called the university 16 days later and was provided two email addresses for people to contact for tickets in the ADA section, the lawsuit alleges. Sewell received an out-of-office response from one of the people, then followed up a few days later, according to the filing.
“I remember that I tried 10 times,” Sewell said. “I was talking to a wall basically.”
In December, Sewell got a response that one of the people he was told to contact had died and another employee would help him with his request. Sewell alleges he repeatedly tried to get in touch with someone online through February.
In April, nine days before the concert, Sewell made the 2 ½-hour drive from Wyoming to Utah to try to meet someone from the university in person. “I just told my wife,” he said, “‘I have to go to Utah because I love Post Malone, and I need ADA access.’”
At the U., Sewell alleges that he communicated with a student via handwriting on a yellow piece of paper about the situation. On it, he asked the student if Rice-Eccles sold ADA tickets, if he was in the right building to find someone who could help him, and if he had the right contact information. Ultimately, according to the lawsuit, Sewell did not hear back from anyone at the university and he missed the show.
Now, he’s seeking compensatory and punitive damages and attorney fees.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Post Malone performs at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.
“I just felt like, ‘how dare you just abandon a human,” he said. “I was so excited to go into this big stadium and have that experience … being deaf it’s harder for me to understand music, and so I understand [Malone’s] music; that’s really a rare experience for me.”
Sewell’s lawyer, Jared Allebest, who also is deaf, said the ADA requires accommodations for ticketing, seating and interpreters.
“It’s not just about deaf people,” he said. “It’s about anybody with a disability who wants to attend a concert. That could be a person with a wheelchair, that could be a person who’s blind.”