Studying Time: 3 minutes
Shereen Siewert, writer of the Wausau Pilot and Evaluation, has been respiration simpler nowadays. In September, a Wisconsin appeals court docket upheld a decrease court docket’s dismissal of state Sen. Cory Tomczyk’s defamation lawsuit in opposition to Siewert, the nonprofit newsroom she based in 2017 and one in all its reporters.
The ruling, which Tomczyk didn’t enchantment, ended a three-year authorized nightmare that started after the Pilot and Evaluation reported that Tomczyk, earlier than becoming a member of the Legislature, “was broadly overheard” calling a 13-year-old boy a “fag” at a Marathon County board assembly a couple of surprisingly contentious decision affirming neighborhood inclusivity. Tomczyk denied utilizing the slur and accused the information outlet of getting “smeared” his status.
Though the Pilot and Evaluation prevailed, the lawsuit took a extreme monetary and emotional toll, together with some $200,000 in authorized payments, misplaced donors and sponsors and the trauma of fearing chapter whereas Siewert was caring for her dying sister and mom.
“I had severe conversations with my son about promoting him my house if I couldn’t pay my authorized payments,” says Siewert, noting that she was personally named within the go well with. “I wakened in a panic pondering — I’m 56 years outdated and am about to lose every little thing.”
The case drives house the necessity for what are typically referred to as anti-SLAPP legal guidelines; the acronym stands for strategic lawsuits in opposition to public participation. Whereas 34 states and the District of Columbia have enacted such legal guidelines to guard media and people from frivolous defamation lawsuits, Wisconsin has not.
“We’re starkly conscious that any reporter and any information group in Wisconsin will be sued at any time for something,” Siewert says. “Each time we write a narrative, we’re placing our livelihood on the road.”
Payments launched final 12 months by Democrats would have allowed Wisconsin judges to rapidly dismiss SLAPP fits and require plaintiffs to pay the defendants’ authorized charges. The state’s GOP-controlled Legislature didn’t even give them a listening to. However 2025 affords lawmakers a contemporary alternative to cross anti-SLAPP laws.
Beneath the present customary set for defamation of public figures, a information outlet should present “precise malice” in publishing the data in query — both understanding it to be false or with “reckless disregard” as to its veracity. The Pilot and Evaluation argued, and each a trial court docket choose and three-member appeals court docket panel unanimously agreed, that Tomczyk, as an area businessman who publicly opposed a decision to declare Wausau a “Neighborhood for All,” certified as a public determine and had did not show “precise malice.”
Certainly, the file confirmed that the Pilot and Evaluation took applicable steps to affirm the accuracy of its reporting. Three folks swore they heard him use the slur, which he acknowledged utilizing on different events. (Tomczyk didn’t reply to requests for remark for this column.)
The 2 lead Democrats behind final 12 months’s anti-SLAPP payments — Sen. Melissa Agard of Madison and Rep. Jimmy Anderson of Fitchburg — aren’t returning this session.
However Rep. Alex Joers, D-Middleton, expects his colleagues will revive the laws in 2025 and hopes slimmer partisan margins will encourage extra compromise than previously. The Meeting’s unanimous passage final 12 months of a invoice to guard pupil media from censorship confirmed Republicans and Democrats can discover frequent floor on press protections. (The invoice, nevertheless, died within the Senate.)
The advantages of an anti-SLAPP regulation would prolong past newsrooms. Joers, who labored for Agard earlier than becoming a member of the Legislature, recalled Agard researching the problem after studying that firms have been suing individuals who left detrimental opinions on Yelp. Anti-SLAPP legal guidelines in different states — together with Republican-led Texas and Tennessee — have protected residents from costly lawsuits.
“This might occur to anyone,” Joers stated.
It ought to occur to nobody.
Your Proper to Know is a month-to-month column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Info Council (wisfoic.org), a bunch devoted to open authorities. Council member Jim Malewitz is managing editor of Wisconsin Watch.
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