After Donald Trump sued pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register under Iowa's Consumer Fraud Act last month, Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), called the president-elect's claims "absurd" and "a direct assault on the First Amendment." Acting on that assessment, FIRE this week announced that it will represent Selzer as she fights Trump's allegation that she defrauded consumers by conducting a preelection poll that erroneously gave Democratic nominee Kamala Harris a narrow lead in Iowa.
Trump's lawsuit, which was originally filed in the Iowa District Court for Polk County but has been transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, "violates long-standing constitutional principles" and is "entirely meritless under the Iowa law," FIRE says. The organization describes the case as "the very definition" of a "strategic lawsuit against public participation" (SLAPP). Such lawsuits, it explains, "are filed purely for the purpose of imposing punishing litigation costs on perceived opponents, not because they have any merit or stand any chance of success." FIRE says the case also exemplifies "a worrying trend of activists and officials using consumer fraud lawsuits to target political speech they don't like."
