Andrew Anglin, wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat on January 16, 2016
A federal judge’s decision (click here) to allow a lawsuit to proceed against the publisher of a neo-Nazi website is “dangerous for free speech,” the publisher’s attorney said Thursday.
Attorney Marc Randazza said he believes U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen made a legally flawed decision Wednesday in ruling the First Amendment does not shield Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin from being sued for his followers’ anti-Semitic harassment of a Jewish woman and her family in Montana.
Randazza said he can “see the allure of not wanting to rule in favor of the Nazi,” but expressed concern that the decision could be used to curtail free speech in many other forums.
"The rule needs to be the same no matter what your view is,” he said.
Christensen’s decision allows Tanya Gersh to proceed with her claims that Anglin invaded her privacy, inflicted emotional distress on her and her family and violated Montana’s anti-intimidation law by calling on his followers to unleash a “troll storm” on her, her husband and her 12-year-old son.
The judge wrote in his decision that Anglin’s “morally and factually indefensible worldview” does not disqualify him from free-speech protections — but his anti-Semitism also doesn’t give him special rights, either.
David Dinielli, the deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing Gersh, said Christensen’s decision upholds a recommendation by a magistrate judge.
“Today’s ruling underscores what both we and our client have said from the beginning of this case —that online campaigns of hate, threats, and intimidation have no place in a civil society, and enjoy no protection under our Constitution,” Dinielli said in a statement Wednesday.
