The Rover, in response to Kay’s lawsuit, had lodged an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) filing. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press defines an anti-SLAPP motion as one meant to “prevent people from using courts, and potential threats of a lawsuit, to intimidate people who are exercising their First Amendment rights.”
On its X feed this week, the Irish Rover said that the suit had been “rightfully dismissed” by Judge Steven David, who ruled that Kay’s defamation claim “fails as a matter of law.”
The “alleged defamatory statements were true, within the meaning of the law, not made with actual malice, did not contain a defamatory inference, and there were no damages that were causally linked to The Irish Rover articles,” David wrote in the ruling, concluding that “the statements in the articles were lawful.”
The Rover’s reports “were made in the furtherance of the defendant’s right to free speech, were made in connection with a public issue, [and] were made with good faith and with a reasonable basis in law and fact,” the judge said.
On the paper’s website this week, the Rover’s editorial staff said that Kay had “attempted to silence and intimidate undergraduate students at her own university for accurate reporting on her public comments.”
“We hope that this ruling will serve to discourage such efforts to chill free speech in the future and invigorate others to courageously exercise their right to freedom of speech in pursuit of the truth,” the editors wrote.
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