TRENTON, NJ – Frivolous lawsuits against free speech will be harder to take to trial under a new law signed by Governor Phil Murphy this week.
Murphy signed into law the ‘Uniform Public Expression Protection Act’, aiming to protect citizens from lawsuits designed to suppress their free speech.
The bipartisan legislation focuses on combating ‘Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation’ (SLAPP), which have historically been employed to intimidate and silence journalists, academics, activists, and whistleblowers.
The law allows defendants facing a SLAPP to file for an expedited dismissal.
The process mandates that the plaintiff demonstrate the basis for the lawsuit, while the court considers the matter quickly. This approach aims to reduce the financial and temporal costs for defendants. The law also allows for a pause in other related legal proceedings until the request for expedited dismissal is resolved, and in some instances, defendants may recover legal fees if the lawsuit is dismissed.
First Assistant Attorney General Lyndsay V. Ruotolo said the new law discourages the misuse of the legal system to silence individuals. New Jersey becomes the sixth state to enact particularly strong protections based on the Uniform Law Commission’s ‘Uniform Public Expression Protection Act.’
Shore News Network was sued in 2020 by an Ocean County barbershop after reporting that it violated the governor’s COVID-19 lockdown executive order, a factual news report.
Three years and thousands of dollars later, a judge dismissed the case in favor of the news company, but the current system allowed the frivolous case to drag on in courts for nearly three years.
The bill was sponsored by Senator Joseph Lagana, Assemblyman Raj Mukherji, Senator Jon Bramnick, and Assembly members Carol Murphy and Kevin J. Rooney. Various organizations and advocates for free speech rights have commended the signing of the bill.