Jared Schroeder, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, received a $5,000 grant from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) in 2024 to support a project meant to help journalists and publishers navigate the risk of SLAPP lawsuits. SLAPPs are “strategic lawsuits against public participation” meant to discourage or punish certain news coverage.

The project, supported by RJI, used insights from research performed by Schroeder with the help of three graduate students to update and expand an anti-SLAPP legal guide hosted by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Schroeder and his team finished submitting the entries for the guide in September.

“Jared’s research offers practical information that can help news organizations respond to these lawsuits,” said Randy Picht, executive director of RJI. “Tools that enable us to fight intimidation and preserve a free press are vital, especially for community newsrooms that don’t have the budget for a team of lawyers or a long court battle.”

Anti-SLAPP statutes vary widely from state to state, with 17 states lacking them entirely and others featuring laws that only apply in a narrow set of circumstances. This can allow litigants with nefarious motives to wield the legal system to their advantage.

“In the end, they will lose a defamation lawsuit, but they’re not trying to win a legal victory,” Schroeder said. “They’re trying to drain resources from a news organization. They’re trying to make people afraid to publish about them.”

In the course of providing up-to-date information for all 50 states, a key goal was to add detailed entries even for those states with no specific laws related to SLAPP, given that journalism in these states could be most vulnerable to the impacts of intimidation.

“Each entry includes cases that have happened in that state, and if there’s no anti-SLAPP law, we’re looking at what people in that state have tried to do to protect themselves,” Schroeder added. “Some states have anti-frivolous lawsuit laws, malicious lawsuit laws that you can call upon. Or just rules and procedures.”

Schroeder’s research team consisted of doctoral student Živilė Raškauskaitė, currently a foreign news editor for non-profit news network Lithuanian National Radio and Television; master’s student Skye Lucas, who won Top Student Paper at the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium in March, 2024, for her case studies on anti-SLAPP laws in 10 states; and Sara George, who graduated in May, 2024, and planned to pursue a master’s degree at the London School of Economics starting in the fall of 2025.