Two Wyoming lawmakers sued the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’s fundraising arm last year on claims that the group defamed them and held them in a false light, during a cantankerous campaign season.
Reps. Cody Wylie and J.T. Larson, both Republicans of Rock Springs, filed their suit in the Sweetwater County District Court.
The Wyoming Freedom PAC filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The PAC said it should not be sued for political advertising.
After a hearing about legal validity, Sweetwater County District Court Judge Richard Lavery rendered a 49-page decision which allowed the lawsuit to proceed.
Wylie and Larson were candidates for election to the Wyoming House. The Freedom PAC sent emails and text messages claiming they voted to keep Trump from being on the ballot. The mailers contained a whole bunch of other salacious materials, but the lawsuit revolves around the alleged falsehood that Wylie and Larson made a vote to take Trump off the ballot.
No vote was ever taken in the Wyoming legislature on any bill, resolution or proposal to keep or remove Trump from any ballot.
The vote, which is at the center of this controversy, was a vote on a budget amendment not to fund any of Chuck Gray’s out-of-state lawsuits without legislative approval.
The Freedom PAC argues that stopping Chuck Gray’s out-of-state efforts equals a vote to keep Trump off the ballot.
By the time the budget amendment was passed, Gray had already filed a brief in a case in Colorado, and the Colorado case was already decided, allowing Trump to be on the ballot. This vote was merely to stop funding for Chuck Gray’s out-of-state lawsuits, on the state’s dime, any time in the future.
One has to wonder why the Freedom PAC picked defunding of Gray’s out-of-state political activities as the issue upon which to campaign?
Judge Lavery wrote a decision that serves as a treatise on Wyoming defamation law. He allowed the defamation claims to proceed but dismissed the public light claims. The decision is a well-reasoned analysis which everyone interested should read.
On the defamation claim, the Freedom PAC argued the First Amendment (I am paraphrasing here) gives it the right to say just about anything it wants about a political candidate as long as there’s no malice.
The United States Supreme Court has held that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and press prohibit a public official from recovering damages for defamatory statements unless those were made with actual malice.
The Wyoming Supreme Court said actual malice means “without knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard to the falsity or not.”
Judge Lavery said the clear import of the Freedom PAC communications was the representatives voted for legislation that would have removed Trump from the ballot.
Lavery held the Freedom PAC “did not merely misrepresent Plaintiffs’ view or fail to state the whole truth. Defendant fabricated a putative ‘vote’ on an issue that never came before the legislature and placed it in a list of votes on other topics.”
Lavery decided a jury – not a judge – should make the decision in this case.
The false light claim is different. False Light is a claim based on invasion of privacy. Judge Lavery pointed out Wyoming has not recognized a common law claim for false light. While the judge’s analysis is more in depth than a 750-word column allows, the gist of the judge’s decision is that false light claims do not apply to an official act of a public official.
Wylie and Larson are elected officials. The publications talk about the discharge of their official duties. They do not talk about their private lives – which is essentially what the false light claim is about – public disclosure of private facts.
Since the cause of action was about official actions (and other reasons), the judge dismissed the false light claim.
The judge did the right thing. He is allowing the case to proceed to a Sweetwater County jury after a fair trial on the defamation claim.
The decision is not about some activist judge trying to advance a political agenda. The decision is about letting the citizens of Wyoming, serving on a jury, decide this important case.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 - 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
