Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers he falsely accused of fraud after the 2020 election. A lawyer for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which has spoken out against attacks on free speech by conservatives and liberals, said the bill poses “grave dangers” to Floridians.Īttorney Carol LoCicero, who represents news outlets across the political spectrum, including the Tampa Bay Times, noted that there has been a wave of high-profile defamation cases filed against conservatives and media outlets.įox News agreed to pay nearly $800 million last year to settle a libel suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over false claims the company’s machines manipulated the results of the 2020 election. Supreme Court precedent,” said Chris Stranburg, legislative affairs director for Americans for Prosperity.įree speech advocates have also denounced it. “In our opinion, this runs afoul of 35 years of U.S. Opponents have emerged from people across the political spectrum, including the Better Business Bureau and Americans for Prosperity, founded by the conservative Koch brothers. False statements from anonymous sources would be automatically presumed to be “actual malice” unless proven otherwise.īut the backlash has been arguably more intense. This year’s bill is far less transformative. The bill didn’t pass in part because of concerns from conservative media outlets. House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said last year that the goal was to set up a court case to overturn Times v. The court held in that case that prominent people - politicians, government officials and public figures - seeking to sue news organizations had to prove that the outlet knew that the published statements were false before publishing them or that the outlet acted with reckless disregard for the truth, known as “actual malice.” Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, followed up by introducing bills last year that would have removed many of the legal protections against defamation lawsuits established in the landmark 1964 U.S. Last year, DeSantis held a roundtable with lawyers and others to discuss making it easier for prominent people to sue and win defamation cases against news outlets.Īndrade and Sen. But he hasn’t publicly weighed in on this year’s legislation.Īhead of the 2022 legislative session, his office shared with a lawmaker a draft of a bill that would have required courts in defamation lawsuits to presume that statements by anonymous sources are false. Ron DeSantis, for whom the news media is a frequent foil, has for years wanted to change the nation’s libel laws. When asked by a reporter about conservatives’ objections, Andrade said, “They’re just banging the table.” “That’s reckless disregard for whether or not a statement was true,” he said.
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