In Wilson v. Cable News Network, Inc., the Supreme Court today holds that media defendants can properly file motions to strike under the state’s anti-SLAPP statute when they are sued for a limited number of employment actions they have taken. [Disclosure: Horvitz & Levy filed an amicus brief in the case.]
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Leondra Kruger concludes that the journalist plaintiff in the case could not avoid justifying his claims in response to an anti-SLAPP motion just because he alleged that CNN, his news organization employer, engaged in racial discrimination and unlawful retaliation for complaining about discrimination. The opinion refuses to “effectively immunize claims of discrimination or retaliation from anti-SLAPP scrutiny.”
On the other hand, CNN’s employment actions are not automatically protected by the anti-SLAPP statute just because it is a media entity. To qualify for anti-SLAPP review, the court says, a complained-of employment action must “in and of itself . . . [be] an act in furtherance of [the defendant’s constitutional] speech or petitioning rights” and “as a general rule, a legal challenge to a particular staffing decision will have no substantial effect on the news organization’s ability to speak on public issues, which is the anti-SLAPP statute’s concern.” But CNN claimed it fired the plaintiff for plagiarism, which the court says does implicate CNN’s constitutional rights because “[d]isciplining an employee for violating [journalistic] ethical standards furthers a news organization’s exercise of editorial control to ensure the organization’s reputation, and the credibility of what it chooses to publish or broadcast, is preserved.”
Additionally, the court rules that CNN could not file an anti-SLAPP motion to challenge plaintiff’s defamation claims regarding statements CNN made to third parties, including prospective employers, about plaintiff’s alleged plagiarism. Those claims do not fall under the statute because the allegedly defamatory statements were not “speech that contributes to the public discussion or resolution of public issues.”
The court affirms in part and reverses in part a divided decision by the Second District, Division One, Court of Appeal, a decision the court said “added to a growing divide” in Court of Appeal case law. Also, it disapproves a 2017 opinion by the Fourth District, Division Three (in a case that’s a grant-and-hold for Wilson) and a 2016 Third District opinion.