A federal judge dismissed a police officer's defamation lawsuit filed against an attorney and her nonprofit watchdog group, which made national headlines when it publicized officers' social media posts thought to be bigoted or violent.

U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled D.F. Pace failed to show Philadelphia attorney Emily Baker-White and the Plain View Project showed reckless disregard for the truth by publishing his reply to a potentially offensive Facebook post.

Pace replied "insightful point" to a police officer identified as Anthony Pfettscher, apparently mocking an imprisoned American student in North Korea for "crying like a baby girl." Pfettscher wrote today's youth are coddled "in this weak PC country. Yet they act like act like animals and burn and step on our flag that so many of our children died for defending our rights and our country."

Pace's complaint alleged publishing the post in its entirety, complete with replied by him and others, roped him in with a group of officers Plain View Project believed to "endorse violence, racism, and bigotry and act in manners consistent with these biases in their official capacity."

The defendants argued a disclaimer, which viewers of the website must acknowledge before proceeding, negates any defamation claim because it states, "Inclusion of a particular post or comment in this database is not intended to suggest that the particular poster or commenter shares any particular belief or viewpoint with any other posts or commenters in the database."

Beetlestone's Jan. 13 opinion agreed with the defense argument, noting the disclaimer contained "crucial contextual language."

"They are statements of opinion by defendants that readers could view plaintiff in that way — leaving open the possibility that they also could not," Beetlestone wrote.

The judge also said Pace failed to plead actual malice.

"Although in his brief plaintiff asserts that defendants engaged in 'obvious and apparent journalistic misconduct,' such 'threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice," Beetlestone said.

Pace is represented by Louis Tumolo of The Beasley Firm, who declined to comment.

Michael Twersky of Fox Rothschild represents the defendants.

"The case is important because it represents core First Amendment protected speech. This is speech about what public officials — police officers — put out for all the world to see on their Facebook pages," Twersky said. "All the defendants did in this case is to take the publicly available Facebook posts of police officers and post them for the citizens of Philadelphia to see."

The idea for Plain View Project was conceived by Baker-White when she was working with the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia, she said last year.

While investigating a police brutality claim, Baker-White came across a meme, shared publicly by a police officer, that depicted a police dog, teeth bared and trying to run after a suspect, with text over the image that read, "I hope you run — he likes fast food."

"This led me to ask: how much more of this is out there? How many officers are sharing content like this online?" Baker-White said in an email.

In response, Baker-White and a team of researchers obtained the published rosters of police departments in eight jurisdictions in late 2017 — Dallas; Denison, Texas; Lake County, Florida; Philadelphia; Phoenix; St. Louis; Twin Falls, Idaho; and York, Pennsylvania — and searched Facebook for the officers' names.

When selecting the jurisdictions for the Plain View Project, Baker-White and her team specifically sought a national mix of varying jurisdictions.

"With only eight jurisdictions, this meant we wanted some large jurisdictions and some small ones, some urban and some rural, and we wanted places that were spread out across the country. And second, we prioritized jurisdictions that were already having conversations about police-community relations," she said.

If the Facebook account belonged to an officer in question, it would be scanned for problematic content. After going through more than 3,500 verified accounts, more than 5,000 posts and comments were selected to be featured in the database.

Once the data was collected, Baker-White contacted Injustice Watch, a nonprofit multimedia journalism organization that conducts in-depth research aimed at exposing institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality. Injustice Watch, in collaboration with BuzzFeed, announced the release of the Plain View Project's report last June.

The New York Times and other news outlets reported 72 Philadelphia police officers had been assigned desk duty as a result of the Plain View Project's findings.

In Lake County, there were no repercussions for 16 officers named in the report. The sheriff's office investigated the findings and found no violations of a policy barring "unethical, slanderous or derogatory" social media posts by officers who identify themselves as law enforcement.