NH Supreme Court throws out libel suit brought by man accused of espousing white supremacy

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled that an op-ed piece published in the New Hampshire Union Leader claiming that a resident of Hanover had espoused “white supremacist ideology” was not libelous. The reason: the writer was expressing an opinion rather than making a factual assertion.

According to Grace McFadden of New Hampshire Public Radio, the plaintiff, Daniel Richards, sued the Union Leader and op-ed writer Robert Azzi for a piece that Azzi wrote in 2021 lumping Richards with former Republican politico Newt Gingrich and several others. Azzi castigated them for trying to keep anti-racist instructional materials out of the public schools. (Note: NHPR renders the plaintiff’s name as “Richard,” but it appears as “Richards” in the original op-ed and in court documents.) The passage at issue:

Desperate to stay bonded to America’s original sins of slavery and genocide of indigenous peoples, Gingrich, Frank Edelblut, Dan Richards, Mike Moffett, Joseph Mendola, and others have disseminated, across multiple media platforms, white supremacist ideology to keep Americans from learning an unexpurgated American history from its 1619 origins alongside the dominant White 1776 narrative.

Richards appealed to the state’s highest court after losing at a lower level. Richards had attracted Azzi’s attention by submitting public testimony in favor of a bill prohibiting some classroom discussions about race, according to the NHPR story. The bill passed but was later thrown out by a federal court judge. The state Supreme Court said in its ruling:

Reading the op-ed as a whole, we agree with the trial court that the op-ed merely expressed the author’s political opinions and beliefs that he individually held about the plaintiff and others not based on any undisclosed defamatory facts.

Azzi and the Union Leader were assisted in their defense by way of an amicus brief from the ACLU of New Hampshire, the New England First Amendment Coalition and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders.

It’s a basic part of libel law that opinion is protected speech. Although it’s possible to run afoul of the law by stating a false fact within an opinion article, opinions are not by themselves actionable. As an illustration of that principle, the Supreme Court approvingly quoted the ruling by the lower court, which found that Azzi’s op-ed could not be found libelous because “whether a statement espouses white supremacist ideology is a matter of socio-political opinion that differs between individuals.” Yet the very fact that this case has been hanging around since 2021 shows how even futile legal actions can chill free speech and the free press.

As Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, put it in a statement: “People and the press — despite pressure and intimidation from those with financial resources who vehemently disagree with them — have a First Amendment right to voice their opinion without fear of litigation from those who seek to stifle criticism.”

Richards also sued for invasion of privacy, and that claim was thrown out as well.

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