A California state court dismissed a lawsuit by former U.S. Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA) against the UK Daily Mail on Wednesday in which she sued the publication for publishing “revenge porn” photos of her with a female staffer.
As Breitbart News reported in October 2019, the RedState blog and the Daily Mail published the photos, which were apparently leaked by Hill’s estranged husband. Hill resigned over the affair, though not before casting her last vote to impeach President Donald Trump.
In December, as Breitbart News reported, Hill sued RedState and the Daily Mail, among others. Liberal constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, while sympathetic, criticized Hill for “seeking a radical extension of liability for the media.”
But the Daily Mail invoked California’s anti-SLAPP law, a law that seeks to discourage “strategic lawsuits against public participation” that interfere with free speech by using litigation to intimidate the media or make criticism of public officials potentially too costly.
A Los Angeles court agreed, and tossed Hill’s suit against the Daily Mail — with similar outcomes likely for the other defendants, the Los Angeles Times reported:
The Daily Mail’s news gathering and publication of images depicting a nude Hill brushing another woman’s hair and holding a bong are protected by the 1st Amendment, and the content of the pictures was in the public interest because of Hill’s position as an elected official, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Yolanda Orozco wrote in a decision that dismissed Hill’s case against the Daily Mail.
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Hill sued the Daily Mail, Red State, journalist Jennifer Van Laar and ex-husband Kenneth Heslap, arguing they violated California’s revenge-porn law by distributing and/or publishing the intimate photographs.
The media outlets and Van Laar argued that Hill failed to meet the requirements of the law because they were not the original distributors of the images, because Hill’s nipples and genitals were redacted in the published pictures, and because of a “public interest” exemption. They asserted a 1st Amendment right to publish information about an elected official’s behavior that is newsworthy.
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Wednesday’s ruling in favor of the Daily Mail could indicate similarrulings are likely for Van Laar and Red State because they made analogousarguments, said Krista Lee Baughman, Van Laar’s attorney.
Hill’s attorney, Carrie Goldberg, called the Daily Mail a “woman-terrorizing sicko publication” in a tweet:
This is just phase 1 of the fight. There's much more in store. Daily Mail may have won this motion, but they will go down in history as a woman-terrorizing sicko publication. And this will get reversed. 14/14
— Carrie A. Goldberg (@cagoldberglaw) April 7, 2021
Hill expressed similar sentiments, warning of the implications for women in politics:
I sued the Daily Mail for their publication of my nonconsensual nude images. Today, we lost in court because a judge – not a jury – thinks revenge porn is free speech. This fight has massive implications for any woman who ever wants to run for office, so quitting isn’t an option. https://t.co/Sjhl5XOB6j
— Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) April 7, 2021
She vowed to appeal.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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