Opinion ID: 2784464
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Categorical Proclamation

Text: Driehaus argues that the district court’s categorical First Amendment proclamation is incorrect and unsupportable. Just to recall, the district court announced that: “[A]s a matter of law, associating a political candidate with a mainstream political position, even if false, cannot constitute defamation.” This rendered any further analysis unnecessary. The district court relied on language from Snyder v. Phelps, 131 S. Ct. at 1215 (an opinion denying a grieving father’s intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim against protesters at his son’s military funeral), and United States v. Alvarez, 132 S. Ct. at 2550 (an opinion declaring the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional as content-based restriction on free speech), but neither of those is a defamation case and both opinions acknowledge defamation as an excepted First Amendment issue, see Snyder, 131 S. Ct. at 1215 n.3; Alvarez, 132 S. Ct. at 2544-46 (plurality), 2553-54 (Breyer, J., concurring), which severely limits the application of those opinions to the present case. The district court made no mention of this aspect of the opinions. The district court essentially adopted the approach in Justice Goldberg’s separate opinion in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 297-305 (1964) (Goldberg, J., joined by Douglas, J., concurring in the result). Justice Goldberg argued, albeit with further explanation and reasoning, that the First Amendment protects even malicious and false statements when those statements are directed at public officials concerning public matters or public conduct. Id. at 300. Implicit in the Sullivan majority’s very different opinion is that the majority rejected No. 13-3238 Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus Page 6 Justice Goldberg’s alternative opinion. Therefore, Justice Goldberg’s view is not the law. Moreover, we do not read Snyder and Alvarez as overturning Sullivan in such a way. The district court’s broad First Amendment proclamation is a misstatement of First Amendment defamation law and the grant of summary judgment based on that misstatement is clearly incorrect. But “we may affirm the district court’s judgment on any basis supported by the record.” Seaton v. TripAdvisor LLC, 728 F.3d 592, 601 n.9 (6th Cir. 2013). Therefore, we consider SBA List’s counter-argument that Driehaus cannot satisfy the elements of his state law defamation action, which would entitle SBA List to summary judgment on that basis.