Florida Court Affirms Bloggers First Amendment Rights

A Florida court issued an important ruling recently that is great news for citizen journalists. By affirming First Amendment rights for bloggers in its April 11 opinion, Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal recognized that bloggers have the same protection as newspapers under defamation and libel law. The lawsuit stems back to an incident in 2008 when University of Florida graduate student, Matthew Frederick VanVoorhis, criticized a Florida businessman in a blog post entitled “Christopher Comins: Barbarian Hillbilly Dog-Assassin.” Comins had been charged with animal cruelty after he shot two dogs that had harassed his neighbor’s cattle. The shooting, which was caught on camera and published on YouTube, received lots of media attention and a wide public outcry against Comins. Comins did not sue any major media, but instead targeted VanVoorhis in his defamation suit. His case was quickly shut down. After the court’s first ruling that Comins had failed to give VanVoorhis five days prior notice under Florida defamation law, he filed an appeal. The appellate court held that the blogger VanVoorhis was entitled under Florida Statutes Section 770.01 to receive a written retraction demand before he could be sued for libel.