SPEECH Act Signed Into Law
Despite the unprecedented level of partisan bickering in DC this year, a very meaningful piece of regulation just emerged from Congress on the wings of strong bipartisan support. The SPEECH Act, passed unanimously out of the Senate and signed by President Obama yesterday, effectively brings an end to “libel tourism” – the practice of seeking defamation damages in foreign courts with looser standards than those applied here in the thick-skinned U-S-of-A.
Under the SPEECH Act, such foreign judgments can’t be enforced by US courts unless the speech rights protected in the foreign country are at least as strong as domestic speech rights. And if you try to get your thin-skinned London libel judgment enforced here in the states, not only will you lose, but you’ll also have to pay your adversary’s attorneys fees (the SPEECH Act contains a rare, one-way attorneys’ fees provision).
What’s more, the SPEECH Act explicitly extends CDA 230 immunity to foreign defamation judgments. Eric Goldman has a nice writeup on this provision, which requires that those seeking to enforce foreign defamation judgments against interactive service providers like Avvo or Yelp show that their action would have been permitted in the US under CDA 230 (not bloody likely!).
Great work by Rep. Steven Cohen, who sponsored this bill – we hope to tip our hats to you again in the near future when your federal anti-SLAPP legislation passes into law.
