Anti-SLAPP protection

Wyoming does not have an anti-SLAPP law.

Helpful cases

Wyoming has never had an anti-SLAPP law, nor has any state court explicitly cited SLAPP-related concerns in a decision. As a result, there are few helpful cases that pertain to journalists. These three cases, all from the Wyoming Supreme Court, dealt with frivolous defamation lawsuits.

Dworkin v. LFP (1992)

The Wyoming Supreme Court dispatched a “nuisance suit” filed by an anti-pornography activist who was attacked in the July 1985 issue of Hustler magazine. The court defined a nuisance suit as a case “the plaintiff knows is not well-founded in the law, but which is brought to browbeat the defendant.” Conversely, the court explained such a suit is “one which the defendant finds inconvenient or annoying to fight and which he feels confident the plaintiff will lose.” The court upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss the case and briefly discussed assessing sanctions to the plaintiff’s attorneys.

Davis v. Big Horn Basin Newspapers (1994)

An attorney sued the North Wyoming Daily News for defamation following its accounts of his behavior during a high-profile hearing. The newspaper argued the case was frivolous and the Wyoming Supreme Court agreed. The court affirmed a lower court’s decision to grant summary judgment, concluding Davis did “not raise any genuine questions of material fact.”

Hill v. Stubson (2018)

While journalists were not part of a defamation lawsuit between the state’s superintendent of schools and a state lawmaker, the Wyoming Supreme Court’s reasoning might be helpful. The court dismissed the superintendent’s defamation claim “for failure to state a claim for defamation.”

Legislative activity

Wyoming lawmakers have not proposed an anti-SLAPP law in recent years.

Of note

Wyoming is one of 12 states that does not have an anti-SLAPP law.