The Biggest Threat to Free Speech May Be a Lawsuit No One Can Afford to Fight

These cases are often called SLAPPs, short for strategic lawsuits against public participation. The phrase sounds technical. The effect is not. A wealthy business owner, politician, corporation, or public figure files a defamation, privacy, or business interference claim against a reporter, researcher, activist, or small outlet. Even if the claim is weak, the defendant may face years of legal bills, endless paperwork, and the constant threat of ruin. In practice, that can be enough. You do not need to prove a story false if you can make scrutiny financially unbearable.

This is not a fringe problem. It has been documented across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia. The Council of Europe, the European Commission, press freedom groups, and legal reform advocates have all warned that abusive lawsuits are being used to chill reporting and public-interest speech. The coalition CASE, which tracks SLAPPs in Europe, has reported hundreds of cases across the continent in recent years. Those records almost certainly undercount the problem, because many threats never become public and many targets settle quietly.

The murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 became a brutal symbol of the stakes, but her case also exposed the legal pressure that can come before physical violence. At the time of her death, she reportedly faced dozens of libel suits. The point here is not to blur different forms of attack. Assassination and civil litigation are not the same. But the pattern mattered. When powerful people can swarm a reporter with claims, they can turn the justice system into a harassment machine long before any court reaches the merits.

In the United States, the legal landscape is mixed. The country has stronger speech protections than many others because of the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent, especially the actual malice standard for public officials and public figures in defamation cases set by New York Times v. Sullivan. That standard is a major shield. But it is not a magic shield. Defending a case is still expensive, and anti-SLAPP laws vary wildly by state. Some states have strong statutes that allow early dismissal and fee recovery. Others have weak protections or none at all. That patchwork means your right to speak can depend too heavily on your ZIP code.

In the United Kingdom, defamation law has long been criticized as more claimant-friendly, even after reforms. London became notorious for what critics called libel tourism, where wealthy figures sought to sue in courts seen as favorable to reputation claims. The Defamation Act 2013 raised some hurdles, including a serious harm test, but concerns never disappeared. Investigative reporters and publishers still warn that the cost of defending a case in England and Wales can be crushing. That is the real scandal. A legal system can recognize freedom of expression in theory while pricing it out of reach in practice.

The underlying cause is painfully simple. Justice systems were built on the assumption that both sides are using courts in good faith to resolve genuine disputes. That assumption breaks when one side has near-bottomless resources and the other is running on donations, a freelancer’s income, or a local paper’s shrinking budget. Add digital publishing to the mix and the targets multiply. It is easier than ever to publish criticism. It is also easier than ever for wealthy plaintiffs to threaten multiple people at once, across jurisdictions, with claims tailored to maximize fear.

There is a legitimate counterargument, and it matters. Defamation law exists for a reason. False accusations can destroy reputations, careers, and families. People who are lied about need legal remedies. That is not censorship. That is basic justice. The problem is not that reputation rights exist. The problem is that abusive litigants exploit those rights as a club. Any serious reform has to preserve real remedies for real harm while filtering out cases whose main purpose is intimidation.

The damage from these suits spreads far beyond the named defendant. A small newsroom watching another outlet drown in legal costs may spike a story before publication. An academic may avoid naming a company in a report. A local activist may delete a thread, not because it is false, but because paying a lawyer would mean losing rent money. This is where the public loses most. Corruption, unsafe products, labor abuses, financial misconduct, and political conflicts of interest become harder to expose. Silence is not always imposed. Often it is purchased.

There is evidence that reform can work. Anti-SLAPP laws in places such as Ontario in Canada were designed to allow courts to dismiss meritless cases early when they target expression on matters of public interest. The European Union adopted an anti-SLAPP directive in 2024 aimed at protecting people engaged in public participation from manifestly unfounded or abusive court proceedings in cross-border civil matters. Critics correctly note the limits. The directive does not solve every domestic case, and implementation will matter more than lofty language. Still, the direction is right. Early dismissal, cost penalties for abusive claimants, and strong safeguards against forum shopping are not radical. They are overdue.

Courts also need the nerve to call abuse by its name. Judges should not treat every reputation case as morally symmetrical when the facts show an obvious campaign to intimidate. Legislatures should widen anti-SLAPP protections, not narrow them. Legal aid and pro bono support for public-interest defendants should expand. Newsrooms, universities, and civil society groups need shared defense funds, because isolated targets are easy prey. Transparency matters too. When threats stay secret, the tactic keeps working.

There is another uncomfortable truth. This problem is getting worse at the exact moment independent journalism is getting poorer. Local news has been gutted in many countries. Freelancers do a larger share of risky reporting without the institutional backup that once existed. The result is a dangerous mismatch. The people doing some of the most important accountability work are often the least able to survive legal warfare. That is not a healthy market correction. It is a blueprint for impunity.

The clean, comforting myth is that free speech dies in dramatic confrontations between brave dissidents and repressive states. Sometimes it does. But a great deal of speech dies in a conference room, after a lawyer’s letter arrives and someone calculates the cost of telling the truth. That is not a side issue in the justice system. It is a test of whether the law protects public participation or quietly sells it to the highest bidder.

If democracies are serious about open debate, they need to stop pretending that only governments censor. Wealth can censor. Process can censor. Cost can censor. And when the legal system lets that happen, it is not defending justice. It is helping bury it.