Amid a national outcry over the lawsuit to punish The Clarksdale Press Register, the Clarksdale Board of Commissioners voted this week to drop its lawsuit against the newspaper over an editorial.
FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, not only used social media to defend the Press Register but FIRE attorneys represented the daily paper to fight the lawsuit.
As reported on AFN, the newspaper editorial blasted Mayor Chuck Espy and the Board of Commissioners for failing to notify the newspaper of a city meeting to discuss a city tax. The newspaper supports the tax itself, the editorial states, but it questioned if the city leaders had gotten a “kick-back from the community” for pushing for the tax.
The headline reads, "Secrecy, deception erode public trust."
After the editorial published, the city leaders ran to a chancery court seven counties away and won a temporary restraining order from Judge Crystal Wise Martin.
David Rubin, a staff attorney at FIRE, tells AFN the Clarksdale newspaper is “evaluating its options” even though the city’s lawsuit was yanked.
"We don't think this is a situation where the city should be able to infringe the paper's rights like this and then just say, 'Whoops, our mistake,'" says Rubin. "You can't un-ring that bell."
Looking at Mississippi's libel laws, Rubin says the state is one of 15 U.S. states without a SLAPP law, or anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. That kind of law protects people from lawsuits meant to silence them or dismiss criticism.
FIRE supports those laws because of the group's First Amendment and free speech advocacy.
“Thirty-five states have anti-SLAPP laws,” Rubin says. “What they do is they make it a lot harder to bring a lawsuit, without showing that it has merit, if it's about silencing someone.”
