Tag Archives: Free Speech

“DeSantis wanted to rewrite press laws. Conservative media helped kill the effort.”

Recent years have seen an uptick in people worried that the standard set for defamation in New York Times v. Sullivan is too high. The decision, it is said with a good deal of truth, fosters reckless journalism and the dissemination of falsehoods. This Washington Post article on a recently defeated Florida bill to address these concerns statutorily might give some critics (myself included) pause. The defeated bill would have taken two significant steps toward making defamation suits easier to bring. First, it sought to narrow who qualifies as “a public figure” thereby granting more people a plausible path to a successful defamation case including against the press. Second, and perhaps more shockingly, it created a presumption that anonymous sources were false.

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Defamation Suit Against Maxine Waters to Proceed

A California Court of Appeals has ruled that Joe E. Collin III’s defamation suit against Representative Maxine Waters can proceed. The case arises out of the 2020 election when Collins and Waters competed to represent California’s 43rd congressional district. During the election, Waters asserted Collin’s had been dishonorably discharged. Her allegation was based on an inference from a suit he had filed in federal court. Collins, however, proceeded to show her official evidence that his discharge was not dishonorable. Waters remained skeptical given the initial evidence she found and did not investigate further.

The appellate court accepted that Collins was a public figure, but refused to dismiss the case, arguing it was too early to determine that he had no chance to produce clear and convincing evidence of “actual malice.” The driver of the decision:

“Free speech is vital in America, but truth has a place in the public square as well. Reckless disregard for the truth can create liability for defamation. When you face powerful documentary evidence your accusation is false, when checking is easy, and when you skip the checking but keep accusing, a jury could conclude you have crossed the line. It was error to end this suit at this early stage, for Collins established the minimal case needed to defeat Waters’s special motion to strike.”

The court is operating with the following definition of actual malice: “[P]eople speak with actual malice when they know their statements are false, or they recklessly disregard whether their statements might be false. Reckless disregard, in this sense, requires defendant speakers to have a high degree of awareness of probable falsity.” The case is Collins v. Waters. The opinion appears here.

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