Strategic lawsuits against public participation or S.L.A.P.P.s; are generally civil actions filed with the intention to intimidate, harass, and silence the defendant. Often but not always, S.L.A.P.P.s will take the form of a slander or libel lawsuit, asserting that the defendant said or wrote something about the plaintiff that has had some damaging effect. The plaintiff has no intention of winning a S.L.A.P.P., the goal is to burden the defendant with the stresses and costs of a legal battle until their will is overborne and they discontinue speaking out against the plaintiff. New York Supreme Court Justice J. Nicholas Colabella has been quoted as saying, "Short of a gun to the head, a greater threat to First Amendment expression can scarcely be imagined."
One almost necessary component of these harassment suits is the power differential between the plaintiff and the defendant. Generally, the plaintiffs have the financial and legal assets of corporations, major media outlets, or government agencies on their side. It is favorable to the plaintiffs if the defendant is of limited means, certainly filing a harassment suit against a person or entity of equal or greater means will greatly diminish the effect of a S.L.A.P.P. Not a recent development, the first S.L.A.P.P. was probably filed the day after the first court opened its doors, so why should we be concerned now? There are two notable differences affecting the S.L.A.P.P.s of today which could potentially have a profound effect on first amendment rights. First, the right to free speech can now be exercised on a global scale at no cost and with very little hassle over the internet; as a result the pool of potential S.L.A.P.P. defendants is ever expanding. Secondly, courts and legislatures have taken notice of S.L.A.P.P.s but have had great difficultly preventing them. According to Wikipedia, 26 states have provided some legislation protecting against S.L.A.P.P.s however there is no specific federal regulation against them. The difficulty in rule making is obvious, we want to protect speech so S.L.A.P.P.s should be prevented or categorically dismissed by law but any regulation preventing them also runs the risk of dismissing just lawsuits. Not surprisingly the rules vary wildly across jurisdictions. Two possible first amendment theories that could be wielded against S.L.A.P.P.s include the right of free speech and the right of petition, but without a rule preventing S.L.A.P.P.s the potential defendant is forced to go to court and defend on an individual basis and thus the harassing effect is accomplished by the plaintiff win or lose. Difficult to identify and even harder to prevent S.L.A.P.P.s have the potential to act as a mechanism of censorship protecting the government and the privileged from the voices of average citizens.
Jwalstad-I saw these bills come down through the wire. North Dakota is one of the few states without bullying laws. I believe HB 1147 would require schools to have and enforce a policy, but would leave the wording of that policy up to the individual districts...so it doesn't sound like there would be a uniform policy across all districts. Should there be? I don't know. Maybe not-I'm sure the districts would use similar language in their policies.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that one of the major problems is punishing the cyberbully. How are the schools going to punish cyberbullies when most of the time the cyberbullying takes place after school, off-campus and away from school activities? It looks like the schools will have to pass and enforce the policies in order to be able to punish students for bullying on campus or at school activities. As to conduct off-campus, the schools will have to encourage students to report cyberbullying and then work with parents, especially the parents of cyberbullies, so that the parents are aware their kids are bullying others in the digitial world. By doing so, it's the parents and not the schools that would be doing the monitoring and punishing of these off-campus cyber-bullies.