Lady Justice
WASHINGTON – The District of Columbia Council didn’t exceed its authority when it gave defendants in certain lawsuits a new way to defend themselves there.
D.C. followed the majority of states in passing anti-SLAPP laws, which give defendants the chance to show they are being sued for exercising rights like free speech. SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation.
For example, a Florida state Senate candidate tried to sue a political committee that tried to tie his campaign donations to China. But the case against the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee violated the state’s anti-SLAPP law, a judge found.
Plaintiffs challenging how the D.C. law was passed failed at the D.C. Court of Appeals on Nov. 13 in a case that drew amicus briefs from 32 media organizations and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Because anti-SLAPP motions are filed early in litigation, the challengers argued the truncated discovery process altered D.C. courts in a way that only they or Congress have the authority to do – not the Council.
The Home Rule Act keeps the Council from passing any law that changes Title 11, which relates to the organization and jurisdiction of D.C. courts.
“The Act instead creates supplementary procedures for a small subset of cases in a manner that remains consistent with Title 11,” Judge Joshua Deahl wrote.
“Most states have passed legislation comparable to our Anti-SLAPP Act, complete with similar procedural aspects, and yet no court in this country has deprived its local legislature of the authority to pass anti-SLAPP legislation.”
The law allows defendants to exit quickly from litigation that may be unfounded but could still take years in courts, forcing them to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars – if not more – on attorneys fees and costs.
This chills the effect that abusive lawsuits can have protected First Amendment activity.
The issue of the anti-SLAPP law’s validity came up in a defamation lawsuit filed by retired military psychologists who sued the law firm Sidley Austin. They had been listed in a report that said they had loose ethical guidelines when interrogating detainees after 9-11.
The firm used an anti-SLAPP motion to beat the case in the Superior Court. A panel of Court of Appeals judges reversed that ruling in 2023, but when the full roster took up the case, it was a different result.
“The Anti-SLAPP Act… does not alter the structure of jurisdiction of the District’s courts; it does not divest us of our rulemaking authority; it does not run directly contrary to Title 11; and it does not bring about any other drastic alterations to our judiciary, or seek to micromanage our courts’ procedures…” Deahl wrote.
