Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer filed a defamation lawsuit against Kari Lake on June 22 over her statements alleging election fraud in Maricopa County. Now, Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law First Amendment Clinic is joining Lake in her defense. The clinic co-authored a motion to dismiss with Lake’s attorneys, filed on Monday.
Jennifer Wright, one of Lake’s attorneys who previously served as the Election Integrity Unit civil attorney for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, said in a statement provided to The Arizona Sun Times, “In 2022, the legislature strengthened laws protecting the rights of citizens to speak freely on matters of public concern. Richer’s lawsuit is precisely the kind of abuse of the legal system the law was designed to stop. I have every confidence the court will agree, and dismiss the lawsuit.”
Richer (pictured above), who is known for starting a PAC for GOP election fraud deniers, accused Lake of defamation for accusing him of “intentionally sabotaging the election” and that she “knew or recklessly disregarded the falsity of those accusations.” His lawsuit cited her statements that he “intentionally printed 19-inch images on 20-inch ballots to sabotage the 2022 Arizona general election” and “inserted 300,000 ‘illegal,’ ‘invalid,’ ‘phony,’ and or ‘bogus’ early-vote ballots into the Maricopa County vote count.”
A Rasmussen Reports poll from March found that 35 percent of Arizona voters and 53 percent of Arizona Republican voters said they had seen compelling evidence that makes them believe there was election fraud in the Arizona 2022 elections. The poll also found that 55 percent of likely Arizona voters believe it is likely that problems with the 2022 election in Maricopa County affected the outcome.
The motion summarized, “The sole issue in this case is whether a political candidate should have a judgment entered against her for comments about a public official regarding an election, a matter of significant public concern.” It said the proper way to view the issue was this: “Public officials have the right to voice their disagreement through such open discourse — but they may not use a lawsuit to silence their opponents.”
The motion relied on Arizona’s Anti-SLAPP statute, A.R.S. 12-751. Anti-SLAPP laws, which stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, prohibit people from using the courts to intimidate people exercising their First Amendment rights. The motion said Richer “cannot satisfy his burden as a “state actor” to establish that his lawsuit was not motivated to deter, retaliate against, and/or prevent Defendants’ lawful exercise of their free speech rights … on the core public issue of election integrity.” They said, “ Section 12-751 does not allow him to bring this lawsuit in an attempt to punish or silence such speech simply because he disagrees with it.”
The brief said, “‘False’ speech is not at issue here, only the type of speech that ‘may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials’ that the U.S. Supreme Court has specifically said must be protected.”
It went on to analyze the accusation of false speech. “[F]alsity” is almost never a black-and-white issue, and even a court decision finding insufficient evidence to support a fraud claim to challenge election results is not a finding that the statements are objectively false and cannot be the basis of an opinion about the fairness of an election,” the motion said.
Since Richer is a state actor, A.R.S. 12-751(B)(1) applies, which states that the motion to dismiss will be granted unless he can show both of two things; that his complaint is “justified by clearly established law,” and he “did not act in order to deter, prevent or retaliate against the moving party’s exercise of constitutional rights.”
As evidence that Richer sought to prevent Lake’s free speech, the motion cited a tweet from him on the day he filed the lawsuit. “So I’m suing Kari Lake to hopefully put an end to the false statements,” he said.
Arizona’s Anti-SLAPP law was passed in 2006 and was expanded by the legislature with an amendment in 2022 “well beyond the original limitations of the law,” the motion stated. It cited the “findings and declaration” section of the statute, observing, “Speech about the integrity of the election process is exactly the type of ‘public participation’ that the Legislature chose to protect.”
Lake posted on X, previously known as Twitter, on Tuesday, “There is no hurt feelings clause in the United States Constitution. I have a right to free speech. And I have EVERY right to remind @Stephen_Richer that he has failed the people of Maricopa County. We can’t count on him to count our votes.”
There is no hurt feelings clause in the United States Constitution.
I have a right to free speech.
And I have EVERY right to remind @Stephen_Richer that he has failed the people of Maricopa County.
We can't count on him to count our votes.https://t.co/feT2CSOSE4
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) August 23, 2023
Richer’s lawsuit is being paid for by the Protect Democracy Project, which is described by InfluenceWatch as “a left-of-center litigation organization created to oppose the policies of President Donald Trump.”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Stephen Richer” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
