A&A: Are there legal actions to protect community newspaper against harassment, threats?

Q: I volunteer to help run a small community newspaper. Before we went to print on our first issue, we started receiving bashings from a political group. The leader is a teacher who used her school email to spread her hate to us. After taking up the matter with the Superintendent, things slowed down.

Recently, however, this teacher admitted on Facebook that she stole this month’s issue out the school staffs’ mailboxes before teachers were able to read them. She is now telling folks to steal our newspaper. We are filing criminal charges for the theft. But, what are our rights? She slanders me and my boss saying we are tied to developers and that they hand us money. This is so far from the truth. We believe this is action from a core group of city staffers and ex-employees. After we started looking into documents, things started getting weird and scary for my family.

A: I am sorry to hear you are having such trouble distributing your newspaper.  Serious First Amendment concerns are raised where a government entity – or an individual acting
on behalf of the government – takes action to silence the media.

It is unclear whether this teacher is acting on her own, or acting on behalf of the school she works for. If the latter, then you may want to talk to an attorney about what action you might take given there would seem to be a violation of your and the paper’s civil rights in distributing the news.

If the teacher is acting on her own, however, there may not be any action against any governmental entity you could take.  The same holds true for the threats to you and your family; if those threats are stemming from individuals working at the city, there may be some serious First Amendment implications.

With respect to the potentially libelous statements being made about you by members of the community, lawsuits for libel can be very messy and expensive, and given the strong First Amendment protections for certain types of speech (in particular, opinion), it may be that filing a lawsuit for defamation could be a losing battle.

This is especially true in California, where defendants who are sued for libel often invoke a procedural tool known as an anti-SLAPP (“Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation”) motion to strike, which disposes of lawsuits relating to protected speech at an early stage of litigation.  A successful defendant who responds to a lawsuit with an anti-SLAPP motion to strike can recover attorney’s fees from the plaintiff. 

Bryan Cave LLP is general counsel for the First Amendment Coalition and responds to FAC hotline inquiries. In responding to these inquiries, we can give general information regarding open government and speech issues but cannot provide specific legal advice or representation.