From Farrakhan v. Anti-Defamation League, decided today by Second Circuit Judges Susan L. Carney, Joseph F. Bianco & William J. Nardini:
Plaintiffs' sprawling allegations in the 150-page [Complaint] boil down to two types of claims: (1) First Amendment claims that focus on defendants' alleged speech-chilling activities against plaintiffs through third parties, and (2) defamation claims arising from defendants' various references to plaintiffs as anti-Semitic….
We agree with the district court that plaintiffs lack standing to assert their First Amendment claims…. To the extent plaintiffs assert claims against defendants because third parties—Morgan State University and Vimeo—denied or rescinded plaintiffs' access to speech platforms, those alleged First Amendment injuries are not fairly traceable to the defendants' actions. "Standing requires more than mere speculation about the decisions of third parties and must rely instead on the predictable effect of [defendants'] action on the decisions of third parties." Plaintiffs' allegations that ADL's general advocacy caused the third parties' decisions are unsupported by particularized factual assertions and, instead, rely on mere "[s]peculative inferences."
Plaintiffs' remaining First Amendment claims do not state any injuries in fact. The [Complaint] alleges that that ADL assisted in creating the "U.S. National Strategy [t]o Counter Antisemitism." However, such an allegation does not articulate a concrete and particularized injury. Although plaintiffs suggest that the National Strategy will provide a justification to arrest and prosecute Farrakhan, the [Complaint] does not sufficiently plead that such a threat is "actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical."
Moreover, plaintiffs' claims that ADL's involvement with the New York government caused reputational harm to, and chilled the religious activities of, NOI and its members, and resulted in threatened sanctions from the state government, fail for similar reasons. At bottom, those claims rest on a tenuous chain of hypothetical events and do not show "an imminent threat of future harm or a present harm incurred in consequence of such a threat." See also Laird v. Tatum (1972) ("Allegations of a subjective 'chill' are not an adequate substitute for a claim of specific present objective harm or a threat of specific future harm.")….
We [also] conclude that plaintiffs fail to state any plausible defamation claims because the challenged statements are nonactionable opinions or, even if actionable, are not adequately alleged to be false or to have been made with actual malice….
