By Tom Hals
(Reuters) – The New York Times sued an anti-immigration author for the cost of defending itself against defamation in what appears to be one of the first cases brought under a recently expanded “anti-SLAPP” law to protect critical speech.
The company is seeking unspecified fees spent fending off a 2020 lawsuit by Peter Brimelow, according to the company’s lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday.
Brimelow had sued the company over five articles published between January 2019 and May 2020 that described him as being “white nationalist” and his VDARE.com website as being “animated by race hatred.”
Brimelow said the lawsuit does not have merit. “This lawsuit, like the five articles at issue in the original litigation, is but another effort to raise the stakes against dissident (but desperately needed) voices,” he said in an email.
The Times said in a statement it was the first anti-SLAPP case by the company which it called an important step in protecting itself from defamation claims.
The lawsuit by Brimelow, who has said he thinks the United States is a white nation, was dismissed in December 2020 soon after New York expanded its anti-SLAPP law, which is meant to deter lawsuits that are designed to punish defendants for speaking out on public issues.
SLAPP stands for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation” and then-Governor Andrew Cuomo said the expanded law would protect free speech by preventing wealthy interests from using the court to bully their opponents.
But the anti-SLAPP law has also been embraced by the powerful.
Fox News argued a $2 billion defamation lawsuit by the Smartmatic voting systems company violated the law and former President Donald Trump tried unsuccessfully to use the law to sue E. Jean Carroll, a writer who said he raped her in the 1990s.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Sandra Maler)
