A newspaper beat a libel lawsuit filed by a politician – using a law that some politicians want to weaken
A newspaper beat a libel lawsuit filed by a politician – using a law that some politicians want to weaken
The Orlando Sentinel invoked a legal shield to defeat a defamation claim made by a local lawmaker. Gov. Ron DeSantis and some other Republicans in Tallahassee keep trying to take that shield away.
This is Seeking Rents, a newsletter and podcast devoted to producing original journalism — and lifting up the journalism of others — that examines the many ways that businesses influence public policy across Florida, written by Jason Garcia. Seeking Rents is free to all. But please consider a voluntary paid subscription, if you can afford one, to help support our work.
Earlier this year, Carolina Amesty, a Republican state representative from central Florida, sued the Orlando Sentinel.
Amesty claimed that the newspaper had defamed her. But she pretty quickly backed down after the Sentinel invoked a longstanding state law meant to stop powerful people from filing flimsy lawsuits just to silence speech they don’t like.
The episode is an example of how Florida deters what are commonly known as “SLAPP” suits — an acronym that stands for “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” and a type of suit that can be filed against everyone from neighborhood activists fighting a toxic landfill to a news and comedy show exposing coal industry corruption.
But some Florida politicians want to unravel those protections. Over the past three years, Republicans in Tallahassee ranging from Gov. Ron DeSantis to certain state legislators have proposed changes that would sabotage Florida’s anti-SLAPP laws.
None of their proposals have passed so far. But since it’s an idea that keeps resurfacing in the state Capitol, it’s worth taking a moment to understand how Florida’s SLAPP shield works — and how it could dissolve if some in Tallahassee get their way.
SLAPP laws are designed to protect people from retaliatory lawsuits when they exercise their First Amendment right to participate in public debates — from testifying at government meetings to speaking at rallies, writing stories, or broadcasting commentary.
SLAPP suits are illegal under Florida law. If someone sues you for defamation, you can ask the judge to have the suit tossed as a SLAPP suit. And if you win, the person who sued will have to pay your attorney fees and costs.
That’s critical. Because the point of a SLAPP suit isn’t to win the case. It’s to bury the target under legal bills and to financially squeeze them into silence — while also scaring others from ever speaking out in the future.
Basically, the law ensures the only one who loses money in SLAPP suit is the person who filed it.
Importantly, this isn’t some kind of blanket immunity for those who really do defame others. The attorney fee provision works both ways: If you try to use the SLAPP shield in a legitimate defamation lawsuit, you could end up having to pay the legal bills of the person who sued you.
Consider Carolina Amesty’s case against the Orlando Sentinel.
Amesty (R-Windermere) sued the Sentinel after the newspaper published the results of an investigation into the lawmaker’s personal and professional background — a deeply reported piece that unearthed unpaid bills, false claims and financial discrepancies, mostly related to some nonprofits and a now-closed chicken restaurant run by Amesty and her family.
This defamation claim was thin. When you distilled her lawsuit down to its specifics, Amesty objected to just one part of the Sentinel’s story. She didn’t contradict a single underlying fact.
The complaint essentially accused the Sentinel of mischaracterizing one point and leaving out some important context. But even those claims are debatable. They’re also issues Amesty could have raised directly to the Sentinel’s reporters before they published — had she responded to their phone calls, text messages, emails, or printed lists of questions left at her offices.
I should note here that Amesty did not respond to my questions about this suit, either. One of her attorneys also said he was not able to answer questions about it. But in fairness to her, you can read her full complaint against the Sentinel, including her specific allegations, here:
Amesty’s case was so weak that the Sentinel invoked Florida’s SLAPP shield. So Amesty suddenly found herself at risk of having to pay the newspaper’s legal bills, if the judge ultimately sided with the Sentinel.
You can read the Sentinel’s argument here:
Amesty decided to back down before the judge ruled. Again, she declined to tell me why she dropped her suit. But Amesty seems to have known she was likely to lose, based on her comments at the time.
“While the Sentinel would like nothing more than to burden me with legal bills in the middle of an election year, I’m focused on my legislative work and the upcoming campaign,” Amesty wrote in an email to the Sentinel when she dropped her suit.
(Let’s just pause a moment here to appreciate how disingenuous it is to sue someone and then accuse them of trying to burden you with legal bills.)
Anyway, this is how Florida’s anti-SLAPP laws are supposed to work. They help weed out frivolous suits meant to silence speech while leaving space for legitimate claims of defamation to be tried in court.
But now let’s talk about how some Florida politicians want to change these laws.
We’ve seen at least three attempts to rewrite Florida’s anti-SLAPP laws in recent years: In a bill drafted by the DeSantis administration in the lead up to the 2022 session of the Florida Legislature; in House Bill 991, which was filed by Rep. Alex Andrade (R-Pensacola) during the 2023 session; and in Senate Bill 1780, which was filed by Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Sanford) during this year’s legislative session.
All three bills would have changed the law so that anyone who successfully invokes the SLAPP defense in a defamation case would no longer get their legal bills paid by the person who filed the bogus lawsuit against them.
To return to the Amesty-Sentinel example: Had any of these bills been law at the time, Amesty would no longer been in any danger of paying the Sentinel’s attorney fees — even if the judge ultimately agreed that she had filed a meritless SLAPP suit and ruled in the newspaper’s favor.
Even if she eventually lost the case, she could still have succeeded in punishing the newspaper simply by forcing the Sentinel to spend money defending itself. All it would have cost was the price of her own lawyers.
This, of course, would undermine the entire point of SLAPP protections.
Remember: A SLAPP suit is not necessarily intended to win. They are meant to cost the target money. That’s why they are usually brought by people who can afford to burn cash on a losing lawsuit.
That includes politicians, who may have access to resources that regular people do not.
Amesty, for example, runs a political committee, Friends of Carolina Amesty, which allows her to raise unlimited sums of money from donors.
Campaign-finance records show that recent contributions to Amesty’s committee include $10,000 from Dan Newlin, a Trump-supporting trial lawyer; $2,500 from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which operates state-sanctioned casinos; and $1,000 from Associated Builders and Contractors, a construction industry lobbying group that pushed a new law protecting companies that deny drinking water to outdoor employees.
Those same records also show that Amesty’s political committee recently made two payments totaling just under $7,500 to one of the law firms that represented her in her defamation suit against the Orlando Sentinel.
It’s not clear if any of that money was compensation for the firm’s work on the Sentinel suit. Amesty’s expense reports simply describe the payment as “legal costs,” and neither she nor her attorney would answer a question about it.
The same firm also successfully defended Amesty in a separate defamation suit filed against her by a former aide.
It's always a Republican!!
Florida has Republican legislators that literally will take apart anything that is good for the residents because it is a pay to play governor and like Trump , Desantis goes after anyone who doesn’t toe the line. No more sunshine ….