The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled unanimously against allowing organizations and attorneys who assist in filing voter fraud cases on behalf of election protesters to be sued for defamation on Thursday.
The case stems from a 2017 lawsuit filed by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice on behalf of a group of Guilford County voters who claimed that they were falsely accused of illegal voting in the 2016 gubernatorial election in which Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper defeated incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.
They filed the action for defamation after the defendant, William Porter, alleged in an election protest document that he witnessed the group engage in voter fraud by casting ballots in other states, which violates North Carolina law.
Mr. Porter, a Guilford Court Republican, filed the election protest form at the Guilford County Board of Elections, which, according to state law, functions as a quasi-judicial agency when hearing election challenges.
According to the defamation complaint, Mr. Porter failed to state the source of the allegation.
In another form, Mr. Porter said some of the voters were felons who were not eligible to vote; however, the group’s attorney found that their right to vote had been restored.
“Defendant’s false accusations against Plaintiffs subjected them to adverse publicity both locally, state-wide, and even nationally, as various media reported the allegations and then elaborated on them,” the complaint states. “This embarrassment and harm to their reputations was compounded by the fact that a public hearing was noticed and held to consider Defendant’s accusations which was further reported in the media. Defendant’s ‘Election Protests’ were ultimately dismissed as meritless.”
The appeals court judges ruled that Mr. Porter was exempt from liability because by filing the election protest he was participating in a quasi-judicial proceeding.
“We believe that we now can proceed against the masterminds of this concerted effort to defame North Carolina voters,” Justice Riggs—a Gov. Roy Cooper appointee—said.
The NC Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s 2021 ruling that attorneys and organizations that provide data suggesting voter fraud can be sued for defamation.
‘Absolute Privilege’
Chief Justice Paul Newby said in his court opinion that the defendants have “absolute privilege” in their protests before the county election board, which constitutes a quasi-judicial proceeding.“The justification for the absolute privilege is rooted in the commonsense notion that in scenarios such as judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings, people must be able to communicate freely, uninhibited by the fear of retribution in the form of a defamation suit,” Justice Newby said. “Indeed, the purpose of judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings is to discover the truth in a matter and do justice accordingly.”
Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation—an independent research institute in North Carolina that examines issues of freedom, personal responsibility, and limited constitutional government—told The Epoch Times that the ruling could mean that those who provide legal support to those protesting an election would now be protected from legal action.
“This is important for a couple of reasons,” he said. “It protects people who may want to organize election protests.”
It could also protect grassroots organizations like the NC Audit Force that research data on election irregularities.
“One of the things they’ve been doing is looking at voter registration to find potential duplicate registration and providing it to the state board of elections, and there has been some resistance to that,” he said.
These types of organizations may be limited in where they can share their information—such as with local organizations who seek to make cases for voter fraud—without being sued, he said.
‘Must Apply to Anyone’
Justice Newby specifically stated in his opinion that absolute privilege must apply to “anyone involved in any aspect of an election protest, even if they did not actually ‘participate’ as a party, counsel, witness, or the like at a subsequent proceeding.”Mr. Jackson said the ruling is also important because of the speed by which county canvassing proceeds 10 days after the election proceeds within the timeframe that one has to bring to light any potential election irregularities.
However, at that rapid pace, mistakes could be made.
“It’s not always correct the first time around, so if you make an honest mistake, you may find yourself liable, so this does provide some protection for people to exercise their right to challenge what they believe were incorrectly processed ballots,” Mr. Jackson said.
According to Justice Newby, absolute privilege is critical for these “fast-paced proceedings like election protests.”
“After the polls close, the initial counting of votes begins ‘immediately,’ and precinct officials provide a preliminary report of the vote count to the county boards of elections ‘as quickly as possible,’” Justice Newby said.
Election protests must take place within the timeframe of the canvassing, he said.
“Accordingly, election protests proceed rapidly, and the process does not lend itself to exhaustive discovery and absolute precision,” Justice Newby said. “Indeed, many times a prospective protestor must solicit the help of numerous individuals to evaluate voluminous evidence extracted from many different sources. Without absolute privilege, the specter of civil defamation liability would chill these individuals’ willingness—and undermine their ability—to engage in the election-protest process.”
According to The Associated Press, the plaintiffs in the 2017 case criticized the ruling, proclaiming that it means people like them can now “be falsely accused of wrongdoing, paraded around as the poster children for fraudulent voting, and have our reputations damaged and degraded, and there is nothing we can do to stop it or prevent it from happening to anyone else.”
