Don't like it sue emFollow

Depends, libel and slander aren't covered by free speech.

Varus, I'm not even going to read the rest of the thread.


Th problem isn't a democrat one, it is a western country one. Frivolous lawsuits are the norm now. You get fast food restaurant regulars suing the places for making them fat, or for making their hot coffee hot. You get theives suing their victims because they got hurt while robbing them. Hell, my mom lost a job this year because a woman backed into her cab, and then proceeded to hire the best lawyer in town to sue the company, all because she doesn't know how to use a goddamn rearview mirror.

Why don't we blame lawyers, judges who won't throw out the cases, and the idiots launching th lawsuits instead?

"In all probability" meaning "I want to whine so I bet it's true despite not knowing anything about the case or the petition aside from what some right-wing columnist told me to be outraged about. So now I'm outraged, damn it!"

Right. But say "chilling effect" a few more times. In lieu of anything worth looking at, some emotional phrases will suffice.

Edited, Oct 25th 2011 6:35pm by Jophiel

The big problem is that the people launching the frivolous lawsuits aren't on the hook for defense costs. You'd see a sharp decrease if that were the case like it is up here.

what? If you sue someone up here and lose it is not uncommon to have to pay for the defence costs. It depends.

Ah. Well here in the UK over the past decade a bunch of ambulance chaser type law firms have popped up, like this one for example. Basically if you've been injured in an accident and it wasn't your fault they help you sue the other guy. It's all bullshit really.

This advert is my personal favourite. Basically people are getting rewarded for being retarded and not paying attention. These people are the reason the peanut butter in my fridge has "Warning: May contain nuts" on the side, I'm sure.

To both of you: The standards to claim libel and slander are much much more stringent for public figures and doubly so for holders of political office. For precisely the need to protect private speech against public reprisal and especially to prevent the use of the courts to infringe political speech. There are whole reams of Supreme Court cases on this and they tend to go against the public figures and holders of public office very very consistently.

Even without knowing any details of the case, I can state that the odds of actually winning such a case are as near to zero as is possible. Unless the organization in question made absolutely direct and clear accusations of specific actions which resulted in direct and irrefutable harm (usually involving allegations of him committing a heinous felony) there's no chance. And even if they did, there's a reasonable chance the case would be lost anyway.

Putting him on a list of people who are in opposition with a pro-life agenda doesn't count. That's so far within the realm of protected political speech that it's not even funny.



It doesn't? A politician suing a politically active organization because he claims that their statements about him cost him the election? Um... that's the purpose of those organizations. That's the very speech that is protected. That's *why* it's protected. Because people have a right to attempt to sway other people to vote for candidates they like and against candidates they don't like. Suing them for it causes them to incur a cost. They have to defend themselves against the suit. And that places a cost on their speech, which makes it not "free" anymore.



If the case has standing, yes. And how do you judge standing? You ask the question: "If these claims are true, do the actions of the defendant warrant judgment?". Unless they did a hell of a lot more than speak out against his vote on the health care amendment and express their view of where he stands on the abortion issue as a result (or how people who do care about the pro-life position should vote regarding him), the speech is protected. There is no judgment to make. The case is over.


Unless he's alleging that they did far far more than speak out against him as a candidate, there is no standing to sue. If that's the case, then it's a whole different case then we were lead to believe. I'm not completely ruling that out, but then the case isn't really about a pro-life group being sued because they associated a politician with a pro-abortion position. I'm arguing that if this case as presented to us is remotely close to the truth, then the judge did act incorrectly.

But they didn't. Having now taken a bit of time to research the issue, the problem is that there's an Ohio law which prohibits political speech that is a "false claim". Driehaus was able to successfully get a judge to rule that the proposed language for some billboards by the SBA List organization was such a false claim. The claim:

"Driehaus Voted FOR taxpayer-funded abortion."


The organization sued against the finding by the Ohio election commission, but their signs were not allowed to be put up during the election (so his claim that they cost him the election is pretty darn pathetic really). They've continued their lawsuit, and now he's decided to countersue (more or less) with that ridiculous claim.

The interesting thing is that the Ohio law may very well be unconstitutional given that the standard's it requires are far far lower than those allowed by previous SCOTUS rulings for political speech. However, Driehaus is suing under the assumption that the law is valid, which makes their statements "false", and thus libelous (if he could show harm I suppose).

IMO, the Ohio law itself is horrific in nature, doubly so in the implementation in this case. This is such a matter of opinion and interpretation that it clearly should fall into the gray area of opinion. Clearly if an anti-abortion group believes that he voted for a law which funds abortion (and the question isn't whether he voted for it, but whether it funds abortion), that should be sufficient for them to express their opinion. It's up to him and other organizations to sway the public that the law in question *doesn't* violate their pro-life principles.

At its heart, the issue is about whether a politician can claim the label of "pro-life" even if a pro-life organization claims he isn't. To me, each group of people should get to decide on their own what is or isn't sufficiently aligned with their own beliefs. To do otherwise leads us into really absurd directions. I mean, just look at the immigration issue. Does someone get to decide which "side" on a question of illegal immigration is "pro-immigrant"? What about education? Do we decide which opinions about how best to educate people makes one pro-education or anti-education?


Having read a bit on this, I'm even more convinced that this wasn't just a bad ruling by the judge in this case, but is the result of a string of bad laws and bad rulings in the past. If this case revolved around the constitutionality of the law in question, there would be grounds to continue. But it doesn't. It revolves around a claim that billboards which were blocked from ever being seen by voters influenced those voters to not vote for a candidate causing him to lose an election. It's absurd right off the bat there, but it kinda gets worse. Had he not known the consequences for his vote, he still wouldn't have a case, but you could at least understand him being upset at an organization he wants to be aligned with tossing him under the bus and calling him effectively a traitor to his own assumed cause. But in this case, anti-abortion groups were absolutely clear that the whole "leave the language allowing a funding loophole in the law, but we'll cover with the president signing an executive order" was not sufficient. He knew this *before* he voted on the law.


And at the end of the day, he absolutely is responsible for the consequences of his own votes. He voted fully knowing that the anti-abortion groups he wanted to stay on the good side of would not like him as a result. He choose to vote for the health care bill anyway. He made his bed, so he really can't complain about it.

Um... It also brings up an interesting question about the primary claim in the case (that the statement is false). If it's false, and there's no possibility that the health care law could result in federal dollars being used to fund abortion, then why was there a need for the executive order? If he honestly believe that the law didn't violate his pro-life position, why hinge his vote on Obama signing the order? He was being squirrelly, and he got caught at it.

Edited, Oct 25th 2011 7:12pm by gbaji

Doesn't look unfair or unconstitutional to me. A lot less interesting and a lot more predictable that it wasn't a problem in it's fifteen years of existence until now that it's about the opposite party.

Edited, Oct 25th 2011 10:22pm by lolgaxe

This is exactly how Marbury vs. Madison was taught in my freshman political science class in 1999:

Esteemed Grammy-Winning Professor of Awesome (yes he was also a classical pianist): And what do Americans do when they get pissed off over what they perceive to have been illegal?!

Class of Frosh blinking stupidly in the harsh fluorescent lighting: Um...

Esteemed Grammy-Winning Professor of Awesome: Theeeeeey SUE!

Class of Frosh:

Then we got into the Federalists, judicial review, oversight, blah blah. But the Marbury in the case name was someone whose political appointment was ignored because someone conveniently "lost" his papers, and he sued Sec. of State Madison because he was righteously pissed off about it.

He also lost the case, as will the dude discussed in the OP.

My original point is that Americans have been suing each other over this ******** since the country was founded, so there's no need to act surprised when it happens on a regular basis.

Hannity said it, it must be true.

He voted for the health care bill, knowing full well that it contained within it a loophole which could allow for funding of abortions, knowing full well that the anti-abortion groups he was trying to stay on the good side of opposed the bill on this very grounds, and using a justification based on an executive order by Obama which those same anti-abortion groups *also* said was not sufficient to prevent the bill from resulting in federal funding of abortion.


My problem with this is where we decide if something is true or false. When one group of people claims that a bill will result in taxpayers paying for abortion, and another group insists that it doesn't, can the Ohio election commission be empowered to decide which side is right? Remember that in this specific case, there was a proposed amendment (Stupak's IIRC) which specifically addressed this issue by putting language into the bill absolutely and clearly stating that not one dollar of federal money could be used to fund abortion, but that amendment didn't pass. Given that, it's more than unfair to blankly determine that the claim that the bill includes taxpayer funded abortions is false under the Ohio law.


At the very least, the absence of a clearly worded amendment like Stupak's should provide sufficient question to allow the claim to be made. In cases like this, we're supposed to err on the side of the free speech. But that clearly didn't happen here. The problem this raises is that if we accept such a low bar to claim that someone's statement it false, then it could be used for anything. Just last week, I got into a political discussion with some friends of mine. One of them claimed that the GOP house had just passed an anti-abortion law which would result in pregnant women dying on the emergency room floor because the health care professionals would not be required to save her life if doing so would result in the termination of her pregnancy.

Of course, I was confused by this, because I'd heard nothing about it and assumed that the claim was pretty exaggerated. I then looked up the bill to check (cause I check sources rather than just allow other people's opinions to sway me. Well... The law says nothing of the sort. The only rationale I can even begin to make is that maybe someone is looking at the section which states that health care dollars can't be refused to hospitals which don't maintain abortion equipment and personal trained to perform abortions and assuming that without that leverage applied, some hospitals wont have the equipment or personnel, and will thus be unable (or even unwilling) to save a woman's life if she's pregnant and an abortion is necessary to save her (wasn't aware that special equipment is needed in that case, but whatever).

It's a hell of a stretch. And they're using this to target a whole lot of GOP house members. But I'd still oppose them suing over it. Why? Because it's those groups free speech. If they want to claim that this law would cause that result, they're free to assert it. It's absurd, but the rest of the voting public can make that determination on their own. We should let them instead of attempt to use the courts to determine who's opinions are true and who's are false.


The principle of free speech is meaningless unless you're willing to allow even that speech which you disagree with and/or find grossly offensive.