COMMENTARY
This is an opinion piece. The views are my own.
The First Amendment guarantees five freedoms in one sentence: religion, speech, press, assembly, and the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The authors put them together for a reason. They knew the powerful would always prefer silence to scrutiny. So they made it the law of the land that citizens could speak, publish, and complain to their government without being punished for it.
There is a modern weapon designed to get around that promise. It’s called a SLAPP.
What a SLAPP is
SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. The term was coined by two University of Denver professors, George Pring and Penelope Canan, who studied how people with money and power use courts to punish critics.
A SLAPP isn’t filed to win. It’s filed to hurt. The goal is to drag a critic into court, drain their bank account, consume their time, and send a message to everyone watching: speak up, and this will hap…
