[sasmithjr]

> because the CoC allows this.

Project owners could do this before the CoC was created, and even if the CoC explicitly disallowed it, the project owners could do it anyway. The existence of the CoC changes absolutely nothing about what the project owners can and cannot do.

[revelio]

They could, but their justification had to be "I don't like you". The CoC process is designed to enable exclusion via opaque committees who justify their decisions by reference to vague and subjective criteria. It makes the people doing it feel better by allowing them to pretend everyone signed up for whatever random thing they decided today, and thus shield themselves from criticism.