By FLFAF
By Jason Garcia
Seeking Rents
June 28, 2024
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.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 fromneighborhood activists fighting a toxic landfillto anews 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.
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