December 1, 2023

Ninth Circuit gives Satanic Temple’s SLAPP suit mixed response

Federal appellate court affirms that failed cyberpiracy accusations were bogus but grants TST another chance to make defamation claim against four former members

Jeremy Roller, attorney for the Defendants, told Law360:

After oral arguments earlier this month, we thought we’d be waiting a lot longer for the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court to give us any sort of opinion on The Satanic Temple’s appeal of their federal SLAPP suit that was dismissed for a second time in January.

Thankfully we did not have to wait so long as we’d thought.

[CourtListener]

So, as expected based on the quality of the arguments in the brief and the way the oral arguments in front of the three-judge panel went, the court upheld the cyberpiracy dismissal, with a little judicial shade included:

The “novel argument” that the Temple tried to make was that TST owned any Facebook or other social media profile that had “The Satanic Temple” in a username. This was a new argument because it is complete nonsense.

However, the defamation claim is getting kicked back down to federal court to give TST another go at amending their complaint now specifically for defamation.

So far The Satanic Temple has been given the opportunity to make a complaint, an amended complaint, a second amended complaint, a dismissal with leave to amend (that they did not exercise), an appellate court brief, and a state court complaint.

Clearly, it’s still our contention that TST has been given plenty of chances already, but the judges felt more generous.

As a legal matter, this is not really a victory for TST because there is a reason they have not and never bother to actually specify which statements about them are false and defamatory (“The final claim in the initial complaint is an utterly laughable Defamation claim“), but as a practical matter, it certainly is a victory because it allows the Temple to make yet more frivolous claims we have to rebut, or more to the point, pay lawyers to rebut.

The last matter of subject matter jurisdiction relates to how much money is at issue because without reaching the threshold of $75,000, this would be an issue for state courts to deal with, not federal courts.

Punitive damages are not available on a defamation claim under Washington law. We think the judges were sloppy or just got it flat out wrong, but that may be correctable.  

If The Satanic Temple were amendable to it, we could just move this surviving defamation claim into the state case TST filed against us in April of this year and deal with it all there, but since we contend the whole point is to hurt us financially and harm us in general, that seems unlikely.

While this wasn’t the ideal scenario (being done with the federal court case completely would have been a great load off of us), having a split decision, with TST only being given yet more chances than they deserve (and are most likely to immediately fuck up), is definitely better than it could have gone. 


Oral arguments for United Federation of Churches LLC v. David Johnson (23-35060) in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

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The Satanic Temple's Boogeyman

Queer Satanic

TST sued us from April 2020 to September 2024, and we are still here.