CNN Center in Atlanta. (Photo: f11photo/Shutterstock.com)

The California Supreme Court on Monday largely turned back an attempt by cable news outlet CNN to wield the state's anti-SLAPP statute to knock out a former newsroom employees' discrimination lawsuit.

The high court's ruling partially overturned a lower appellate court decision that found the statute—which shields free speech-related activity from abusive lawsuits—couldn't be raised as a defense in cases of alleged employment discrimination.

“In some cases (including this one, as we explain below), whether the defendant's act qualifies as one in furtherance of protected speech or petitioning will depend on whether the defendant took the action for speech-related reasons,” wrote Justice Leondra Kruger, noting that CNN had made a preliminary case that its termination of former producer Stanley Wilson was made for purposes “in furtherance” of free speech, since it was pegged to an alleged instance of plagiarism.

But the court found, CNN had not made a similar showing in regards to claims that Wilson, an African and Latin American, had been passed over for promotion and choice assignments handed to younger, white colleagues.

“A news organization's hiring or firing of employees—like virtually everything a news organization does—facilitates the organization's speech to some degree,” Kruger wrote. “But it does not follow that everything the news organization does qualifies as protected activity under the anti-SLAPP statute.”

The ruling will allow most claims to proceed in the lawsuit filed in October 2014 on behalf of Wilson, who was 51 years old at the time he was fired and had worked for CNN for 18 years. Wilson's lawyer, Jill McDonell of Shegerian & Associates, wasn't immediately available for comment.

F. Edie Mermelstein of FEM Law Group, who submitted an amicus brief backing Wilson on behalf of Consumer Attorneys of California, said that the opinion provides important guidance for plaintiffs attorneys on when discovery might be merited to prepare to make a showing of “minimal merit” required to survive an anti-SLAPP motion. Wilson's lawyers, she pointed out, will still have the opportunity to show that even the wrongful termination claim has minimal merit when the case is on remand at the trial court. “The plaintiffs have to be really prepared when filing a complaint to make sure they have enough evidence to fulfill the second prong” of anti-SLAPP analysis to show minimal merit, she said. Mermelstein said Monday's opinion opened the door to discovery in certain instances, including to allow plaintiffs to search for potential evidence of a discriminatory motive.

“Where a defendant relies on motive evidence in support of an anti-SLAPP motion, a plaintiff's request for discovery concerning the asserted motive may often present paradigmatic 'good cause,'” Kruger wrote in Monday's opinion. “With careful attention to the limited nature of a plaintiff's second step showing, and to granting discovery in appropriate cases, courts can mitigate the burden of anti-SLAPP enforcement on discrimination and retaliation plaintiffs, even if they cannot eliminate it altogether,” the judge wrote.

Network spokeswoman Barbara Levin said CNN declined to comment on the case Monday afternoon.

The California News Publishers Association, of which The Recorder is a member, joined a group of media organizations represented by Davis Wright Tremaine filing an amicus brief backing CNN in the case. Davis Wright's Kelli Sager was out of the office and unavailable Monday.