URBAN LAW
YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW
By Jim Malewitz
Jim Malewitz
Shereen Siewert, publisher of the Wausau Pilot and Review, has been breathing easier these days. In September, a Wisconsin appeals court upheld a lower court’s dismissal of state Sen. Cory Tomczyk’s defamation lawsuit against Siewert, the nonprofit newsroom she founded in 2017 and one of its reporters.
The ruling, which Tomczyk did not appeal, ended a three-year legal nightmare that began after the Pilot and Review reported that Tomczyk, before joining the Legislature, “was widely overheard” calling a 13-year-old boy a “fag” at a Marathon County board meeting about a surprisingly contentious resolution affirming community inclusivity. Tomczyk denied using the slur and accused the news outlet of having “smeared” his reputation.
Although the Pilot and Review prevailed, the lawsuit took a severe financial and emotional toll, including some $200,000 in legal bills, lost donors and sponsors and the trauma of fearing bankruptcy while Siewert was caring for her dying sister and mother.
“I had serious conversations with my son about selling him my home if I couldn’t pay my legal bills,” says Siewert, noting that she was personally named in the suit. “I woke up in a panic thinking — I’m 56 years old and am about to lose everything.”
The case drives home the need for what are sometimes called anti-SLAPP laws; the acronym stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation. While 34 states and the District of Columbia have enacted such laws to protect media and individuals from frivolous defamation lawsuits, Wisconsin has not.
“We are starkly aware that any reporter and any news organization in Wisconsin can be sued at any time for anything,” Siewert says. “Every time we write a story, we’re putting our livelihood on the line.”
Bills introduced last year by Democrats would have allowed Wisconsin judges to quickly dismiss SLAPP suits and require plaintiffs to pay the defendants’ legal fees. The state’s GOP-controlled Legislature did not even give them a hearing. But 2025 offers lawmakers a fresh opportunity to pass anti-SLAPP legislation.
Under the current standard set for defamation of public figures, a news outlet must show “actual malice” in publishing the information in question — either knowing it to be false or with “reckless disregard” as to its veracity. The Pilot and Review argued, and both a trial court judge and three-member appeals court panel unanimously agreed, that Tomczyk, as a local businessman who publicly opposed a resolution to declare Wausau a “Community for All,” qualified as a public figure and had failed to prove “actual malice.”
Indeed, the record showed that the Pilot and Review took appropriate steps to affirm the accuracy of its reporting. Three people swore they heard him use the slur, which he acknowledged using on other occasions. (Tomczyk did not respond to requests for comment for this column.)
The two lead Democrats behind last year’s anti-SLAPP bills — Sen. Melissa Agard of Madison and Rep. Jimmy Anderson of Fitchburg — aren’t returning this session.
But Rep. Alex Joers, D-Middleton, expects his colleagues will revive the legislation in 2025 and hopes slimmer partisan margins will encourage more compromise than in the past. The Assembly’s unanimous passage last year of a bill to protect student media from censorship showed Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on press protections. (The bill, however, died in the Senate.)
The benefits of an anti-SLAPP law would extend beyond newsrooms. Joers, who worked for Agard before joining the Legislature, recalled Agard researching the issue after learning that companies were suing people who left negative reviews on Yelp. Anti-SLAPP laws in other states — including Republican-led Texas and Tennessee — have protected residents from expensive lawsuits.
“This could happen to anybody,” Joers said.
It should happen to no one.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Council member Jim Malewitz is managing editor of Wisconsin Watch.