Inside the Republican playbook for crushing press freedoms
A bill in Florida that’s supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis would make it easier to sue journalists for defamation, and press freedom advocates say such a change in the law would be extremely dangerous. The bill would seemingly violate a Supreme Court ruling that established these press protections, New York Times v. Sullivan, but it appears the bill may be an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider that decision and, as former President Trump once put it, “open up” libel laws.
The bill, HB 991, was introduced by Florida state Rep. Alex Andrade, a Republican. It would redefine “actual malice” to make it easier to win a defamation suit against a journalist. Actual malice is the term used to determine if a journalist knew what they were writing about a public figure was false or should have known it was false. The bill would also change who can be considered a “public figure” under the law.
“The New York Times v. Sullivan ‘actual malice’ rule applies when the plaintiff is a public official or a public figure, and the courts have defined the category of public figure pretty broadly,” Samantha Barbas, a law professor at the University at Buffalo who focuses on First Amendment law, told Raw Story. ...