Opinion ID: 2303223
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Right to Petition

Text: [¶ 21] The right to petition the government, including the right to file complaints in courts, is a fundamental right protected by the First Amendment. See U.S. Const. amend. I; Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri, 564 U.S. ___, 131 S.Ct. 2488, 2491, 2494, 180 L.Ed.2d 408 (2011) (Among other rights essential to freedom, the First Amendment protects `the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.'); McDonald v. Smith, 472 U.S. 479, 482, 484-85, 105 S.Ct. 2787, 86 L.Ed.2d 384 (1985). [7] The right to petition is one of the most precious of the liberties safeguarded by the Bill of Rights and is made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. United Mine Workers v. Illinois Bar Ass'n, 389 U.S. 217, 222, 88 S.Ct. 353, 19 L.Ed.2d 426 (1967); Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 358, 123 S.Ct. 1536, 155 L.Ed.2d 535 (2003). This right belongs not just to MDP and Moffett in their petitioning of the courts and state agencies as alleged in the underlying complaint, but to Nader in petitioning the court to seek redress for alleged injuries to his right to participate in elections and to voters' rights to have the opportunity to vote for the qualified candidate of their choice. These rights, Nader alleges, were diminished or eliminated as a result of MDP's and Moffett's petitioning activities. [8] [¶ 22] When interpreting the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP statute, which contains provisions nearly identical to 14 M.R.S. § 556, see Morse Bros., 2001 ME 70, ¶ 15, 772 A.2d 842, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recognized the conflicting rights to petition inherent in the statute, stating: Despite the apparent purpose of the anti-SLAPP statute to dispose expeditiously of meritless lawsuits that may chill petitioning activity, the statutory language fails to track and implement such an objective. By protecting one party's exercise of its right of petition, unless it can be shown to be sham petitioning, the statute impinges on the adverse party's exercise of its right to petition, even when it is not engaged in sham petitioning. Duracraft Corp. v. Holmes Prods. Corp., 427 Mass. 156, 691 N.E.2d 935, 943 (1998). [9] As we interpret the language of the anti-SLAPP statute applicable to the second step of our anti-SLAPP analysis, we must keep in mind the conflicting rights to petition implicated by the statute.