News outlets and journalists are now explicitly protected under a new state law intended to snuff out lawsuits filed to discourage people from participating in government.
Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill into law this week expanding protections under the Citizen Participation Act, legislation prompted by a former state official’s suit against the Chicago Sun-Times that put the definition of “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs, before the Illinois Supreme Court.
The state’s anti-SLAPP law was written to empower courts to swiftly throw out any meritless, retaliatory suit that “chills and diminishes citizen participation in government” with the threat of expensive litigation.
But it didn’t “encompass all media reports on matters of public concern,” as Justice David Overstreet noted in the state high court’s decision last fall allowing the defamation lawsuit of former Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board Executive Director Mauro Glorioso against the Sun-Times to proceed.
The expanded law now clarifies “that press opining, reporting, or investigating matters of public concern is participating and communicating with the government” and should be shielded from the strategic lawsuits.
Pritzker framed the legislation as a response to lawsuits that President Donald Trump has filed against media companies.
“As Trump and his friends continue their frivolous and targeted attacks on members of the free press, we are working to protect and empower Illinois journalists as they keep the general public informed,” the governor said in a written statement.
Sponsoring state Sen. Steve Stadelman, D-Rockford, said the bolstered law “ensures the media can do their job freely, without fear of legal harassment or intimidation.”
Damon Dunn, a lawyer representing the newspaper in the Glorioso case, said, “It is gratifying how promptly this happened after the Sun-Times was willing to take this key question to the Supreme Court.”
The state Supreme Court didn’t rule on Glorioso’s defamation claim against the Sun-Times, only narrowly saying no to the newspaper’s argument to dismiss the suit as a SLAPP. The case remains pending in Cook County circuit court and could go to trial next year.
The Sun-Times has stood behind the accuracy of reporter Tim Novak’s story, published in February 2020, which reported that an anonymous complaint had prompted investigations by the state’s executive inspector general’s office and Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker’s office into whether Glorioso, a Republican attorney, had pressured staff members to give Trump a $1 million property tax refund on Trump International Hotel & Tower.
During the inspector general’s investigation, Pritzker removed Glorioso from his position in October 2020, citing concerns over a backlog of cases.
Glorioso then sued Novak and the Sun-Times in January 2021 for allegedly misrepresenting the nature of the complaint about how the Trump case was handled.
The executive inspector general’s office later deemed “unfounded” the anonymous complaint against Glorioso — but the watchdog agency ruled in September 2021 that Glorioso violated state law and policy by deleting files and emails related to Trump’s tax appeal.