Louis Farrakhan Loses Defamation and First Amendment Lawsuit Against Anti-Defamation League and Others

From Farrakhan v. Anti-Defamation League, decided today by Second Circuit Judges Susan L. Carney, Joseph F. Bianco & William J. Nardini:

Plaintiffs’ sprawling allegations in the 150-page [Complaint] boil down to two types of claims: (1) First Amendment claims that focus on defendants’ alleged speech-chilling activities against plaintiffs through third parties, and (2) defamation claims arising from defendants’ various references to plaintiffs as anti-Semitic….

We agree with the district court that plaintiffs lack standing to assert their First Amendment claims…. To the extent plaintiffs assert claims against defendants because third parties—Morgan State University and Vimeo—denied or rescinded plaintiffs’ access to speech platforms, those alleged First Amendment injuries are not fairly traceable to the defendants’ actions. “Standing requires more than mere speculation about the decisions of third parties and must rely instead on the predictable effect of [defendants’] action on the decisions of third parties.” Plaintiffs’ allegations that ADL’s general advocacy caused the third parties’ decisions are unsupported by particularized factual assertions and, instead, rely on mere “[s]peculative inferences.”

Plaintiffs’ remaining First Amendment claims do not state any injuries in fact. The [Complaint] alleges that that ADL assisted in creating the “U.S. National Strategy [t]o Counter Antisemitism.” However, such an allegation does not articulate a concrete and particularized injury. Although plaintiffs suggest that the National Strategy will provide a justification to arrest and prosecute Farrakhan, the [Complaint] does not sufficiently plead that such a threat is “actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.”

Moreover, plaintiffs’ claims that ADL’s involvement with the New York government caused reputational harm to, and chilled the religious activities of, NOI and its members, and resulted in threatened sanctions from the state government, fail for similar reasons. At bottom, those claims rest on a tenuous chain of hypothetical events and do not show “an imminent threat of future harm or a present harm incurred in consequence of such a threat.” See also Laird v. Tatum (1972) (“Allegations of a subjective ‘chill’ are not an adequate substitute for a claim of specific present objective harm or a threat of specific future harm.”)….

We [also] conclude that plaintiffs fail to state any plausible defamation claims because the challenged statements are nonactionable opinions or, even if actionable, are not adequately alleged to be false or to have been made with actual malice….

 “Expressions of opinion, as opposed to assertions of fact, are deemed privileged and, no matter how offensive, cannot be the subject of an action for defamation.” Plaintiffs challenge a number of defendants’ statements that label plaintiffs in various ways as “anti-Semitic.” Under New York law, these statements are nonactionable opinions. See, e.g., Silverman v. Daily News, L.P. (N.Y. App. Div. 2015) (holding that statements in articles referring to plaintiff’s “racist writings” were nonactionable opinions); Russell v. Davies (N.Y. App. Div. 2012) (holding that news stories describing plaintiff’s essay as “racist” and “anti-Semitic” were nonactionable opinions); see also, e.g., Rapaport v. Barstool Sports Inc. (2d Cir. 2024) (summary order) (concluding that “accusations of racism and fraud are non-actionable because they lack a clearly defined meaning and, in this context, are incapable of being objectively proven true or false.”).

Plaintiffs also challenge statements made by defendants interpreting Farrakhan’s own statements. The challenged statements were either accompanied by disclosures of Farrakhan’s actual statements or were based on Farrakhan’s statements that were widely reported by the media. For example, the letter sent by Greenblatt to Ticketmaster, in which Greenblatt states that Farrakhan is “one of the most notorious antisemites in the country,” quotes multiple statements made by Farrakhan and provides hyperlinks to two articles on ADL’s website that contain additional statements by Farrakhan.

Similarly, the headline of an article challenged by plaintiffs—”Farrakhan Predicts Another Holocaust”—is accompanied by an extensive quote from Farrakhan that, as the district court found, “could be fairly interpreted as a reference to the Holocaust.” Those challenged statements therefore also constitute inactionable opinions. See Gisel v. Clear Channel Commc’ns, Inc. (N.Y. App. Div. 2012) (“Because [defendant’s] statements were based on facts that were widely reported by [relevant] media outlets and were known to his listeners, it cannot be said that his statements were based on undisclosed facts.”).

Finally, plaintiffs challenge certain of defendants’ factual statements. On de novo review, we agree with the district court that the [Complaint] fails to sufficiently allege the falsity of those statements. We further agree with the district court that the [Complaint] did not contain “facts that would raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence that Greenblatt or the ADL made the statement with knowledge of or reckless disregard as to the statement’s falsity” [the relevant standard, given that Farrakhan is a public figure -EV]….

Nathan E. Siegel and Adam I. Rich (Davis Wright Tremaine LLP) and Julie R. F. Gerchik, Patricia L. Glaser, and Eric Y. Su (Glaser Weil Fink Howard Jordan & Shapiro LLP) represent defendants.

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