Fox News is pushing back on a lawsuit against the network.
The Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics (WASHLITE) recently filed a lawsuit against Fox News in early April, alleging the network violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act.
“We are not trying to chill free speech here. But we believe the public was endangered by false and deceptive communications in the stream of commerce,” Attorney Liz Hallock, who represented WASHLITE but has since withdrawn as counsel, said in a statement.
The activist group’s lawsuit accuses Fox News of spreading false information about the coronavirus outbreak and for allegedly previously representing the coronavirus as a hoax. At the time, Fox News called the lawsuit “Wrong on the facts, frivolous on the law.”
Now, Fox News is moving to dismiss WASHLITE’s lawsuit, filing the motion on Tuesday.
They are urging “a Washington State trial court firmly and swiftly reject the claims filed by WASHLITE, an activist group seeking to impose a judicial gag order on FOX opinion commentary regarding the Coronavirus outbreak,” the press release reads.
The motion says WASHLITE’s “claims here are frivolous because the statements at issue are core political speech on matters of public concern. The First Amendment does not permit censoring this type of speech based on the theory that it is ‘false’ or ‘outrageous.’ Nor does the law of the State of Washington.”
Additionally, the motion accuses WASHLITE of a “misguided attempt” to “use a lawsuit to stifle Fox News commentary or the viewpoints of its hosts,” according to the press release.
The motion reads:
“Fox’s statements are core political speech on a matter of public concern—how dangerous the Coronavirus is, and how society should respond to it. Under the First Amendment and state law, the truth or falsity of this type of speech must be resolved through free and open debate in the marketplace of ideas—not through burdensome litigation seeking to impose legal penalties on political statements that a jury might deem ‘false’ or ‘outrageous.’”
The motion includes a 61-page appendix of “inaccuracies” in the WASHLITE’s lawsuit, to show transcripts from the network warning about the severity of the coronavirus and pointing out others “downplaying” it.
“It’s Constitutional Law 101: the First Amendment protects our right to speak openly and freely on matters of public concern,” FOX News Media General Counsel Lily Fu Claffee said in a statement. “If WASHLITE doesn’t like what we said, it can criticize us, but it can’t silence us with a lawsuit.”