Joy Reid speaks at the 2019 Global Citizen Festival in Central Park last year. Photo: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Wednesday revived a defamation lawsuit against television news host Joy Reid, joining a circuit split over whether state laws imposing special motions for striking such claims apply in federal courts.

A three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based appeals court ruled for the first time that California's anti-SLAPP statute, which was designed to deter the filing of meritless defamation claims, conflicted with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by increasing a plaintiff's burden to overcome pretrial dismissal.

The decision brought the Second Circuit in line with federal appeals courts in New Orleans, Atlanta and Washington, D.C., which have all held that the laws do not apply outside of state court. The First and Ninth circuits, however, have found no conflicts with similar laws in Maine and California.

In an interview, L. Lin Wood, an Atlanta-based attorney and nationally known defamation lawyer, called the Second Circuit's decision a "landmark ruling" that could help to settle the debate around state anti-SLAPP statutes and their application in federal court.

"The Second Circuit hit the nail on the head," he said.

The ruling came in a nearly 2-year-old lawsuit against Reid, the newly announced anchor of MSNBC's 7 p.m. weeknight hour.

According to the lawsuit, Reid allegedly accused a woman, on social media, of making racist remarks to a teenager at a 2018 city council meeting in Simi Valley, California.

One of Reid's posts, the complaint said, featured a picture of the open-mouthed plaintiff, Roslyn La Liberte, speaking with the 14-year-old boy and claimed that La Liberte had angrily called him a "dirty Mexican."

Two days later, Reid shared a post on Instagram and Facebook, which juxtaposed the La Liberte's photograph with the famous 1957 image of a white woman in Little Rock, Arkansas, screaming at a Black child trying to attend a recently desegregated school. The caption on the post read: "History sometimes repeats. And it is full of rage."

The teenager later told reporters that he and La Liberte were having a civil conversation, and Reid apologized. La Liberte hired Wood, known for his representation of Richard Jewell, the security guard falsely accused in the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing, and filed her lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court.

U.S. District Judge Doris Irizarry of the Eastern District of New York dismissed the suit last September under the California law, which allows defendants to file a "special motion to strike" defamation claims within 60 days of being served with a complaint. Under the statute, a judge must grant the motion unless there is "a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim."

On appeal, the Second Circuit held that the Federal Rules do not impose a probability requirement at the pleading stage of litigation, and said that the two approaches could not exist side by side.

"Therefore, California's special motion requires the plaintiff to make a showing that the Federal Rules do not require," U.S. Judge Dennis G. Jacobs wrote in a 33-page opinion on behalf of the panel.

"The idea that the more stringent requirement of the anti-SLAPP standard is a beneficial 'supplement' to the Federal Rules is a policy argument—and fatal, because the more permissive standards of the Federal Rules likewise reflect policy judgments as to what is sufficient," Jacobs said.

He was joined in the ruling by Judges Amalya L. Kearse and José A. Cabranes.

Wednesday's ruling also rejected the lower court holding that media interviews La Liberte gave following the incident had made her a limited-purpose public figure for whom the onerous actual malice standard applied.

"Moreover," Jacobs wrote, "the court erred by characterizing Reid's second post as nonactionable opinion. … That post could be interpreted as accusing La Liberte of engaging in specific racist conduct, which is a provable assertion of fact and therefore actionable."

John Reichman, an attorney for Reid, said Wednesday that they "are disappointed that the case was not dismissed, but that doesn't change the fact that the case is completely without merit and we will vigorously contest it."

On Wednesday, Wood criticized media companies across the country for having "twisted" anti-SLAPP laws to stifle free speech. But despite the deepening circuit split, he said, he did not expect to see the ruling appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I believe that the law is clear, and the Supreme Court will so state that you don't go into federal court and apply state" procedural standards, he said. "The Supreme Court is never [going to] allow anti-SLAPP statutes to apply in federal courts."

Reid is represented by Reichman and Jason L. Libou of Wachtel Missry in Manhattan.

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