Judge greenlights conservative activist's defamation suit against Anti-Defamation League

The Anti-Defamation League got a lump of coal in its stocking from a Texas judge known for frustrating a wide range of progressive priorities, from redefining sex to include gender identity in Title IX and Obamacare coverage requirements to "ghost gun" rules and vaccine mandates.

U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor greenlit defamation claims against the Jewish civil rights group for putting Patriot Voice founder John Sabal – who organized "For God and Country" conferences featuring speakers in President-elect Donald Trump's orbit – in its "Glossary of Hate and Extremism" and "Hate in the Lone Star State" report, which linked to his glossary entry.

Sabal has shown the glossary creates "a defamatory impression by … juxtaposing facts in a misleading way," and he made the requisite "especially rigorous showing" of the report's "defamatory meaning" by implication, O'Connor wrote, quoting Texas Supreme Court decisions on defamation via "publication as a whole" and The Dallas Morning News.

It's at least the third setback for high-profile defamation defendants in just the Advent season, following this summer's surprise decision for a new trial in former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's defamation suit against The New York Times.

ABC News paid Trump $15 million for his nascent presidential library to resolve claims over George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and falsely saying Trump was found "liable for rape," and CNN faces punitive damages for defaming an Afghanistan evacuation contractor. A 139-year-old Massachusetts newspaper shut down entirely to settle a mayor's suit.

O'Connor's Dec. 13 ruling largely flew under the radar until Sunday night, when Just the News heard from Sabal's lawyer. Courthouse News emphasized O'Connor's finding for ADL – that its claims about Sabal's antisemitic statements are "substantially true" –  in a news brief Dec. 16. The only other coverage Just the News has seen is tech blog Boing Boing.

Sabal also failed to substantiate his claim that ADL's statements "produced special damages" because he lost services from PayPal and Total Systems Services – his girlfriend said he actually lost PayPal a year earlier – and Sabal didn't address his "injurious falsehood" claim in responding to ADL's motion for summary judgment, O'Connor ruled.

The ruling is otherwise bad news for ADL in 2025, with Sabal seeking $25 million in damages after it spurned his retraction demands and threatened $10 million suit. ADL did not respond to Just the News queries.

ADL is also feuding with the world's richest man and X owner, Elon Musk, over its portrayal of the social media platform under Musk's ownership as a hotbed of antisemitism, which prompted his lawsuit threat, and alleged pressure to shut down a popular conservative account.

Musk called the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes similar lists as ADL, a "criminal organization" after the Christian conservative satire site The Babylon Bee accused SPLC of "doxxing" the pseudonymous writers for its hard-news counterpart Not The Bee. SPLC said their identities and contact information were on the website.

The Dustin Inman Society's defamation suit against SPLC for designating it an "anti-immigrant hate group," which was greenlit by a judge in spring 2023, is still slogging through an Alabama federal court this month. The docket shows oral argument was Nov. 22, legal discovery is due April 17, 2025 and a jury trial is scheduled six months after that.

O'Connor greenlit Musk's suit against Media Matters for America this summer for "knowingly and maliciously fabricat[ing] side-by-side images" of major brands' ads "next to neo-Nazi or other extremist content," as if this was the "average user" experience on X.

The Texas judge, nominated by President George W. Bush, emphasized that ADL's glossary includes "terrorists and known white supremacists" as well as "non-violent individuals ADL considers hateful or extreme." ADL's motion said it included Sabal because he "propagates ideas that can inspire others to engage in criminal activity."

Its "Lone Star State" report connects Sabal to a Dallas conference at which Trump's short-lived National Security Advisor Michael Flynn "seemingly endorsed a Myanmar-style coup in the U.S." before backtracking, and it includes statistics such as "Extremist Plots and Murders." 

O'Connor said ADL argues that "Sabal has, through his conferences, advocated ideas that directly call for political violence."

Sabal is not a "limited-purpose public figure" as ADL argues – which would require him to show its statements were made with "actual malice" – but rather a "private individual" who must only show "negligence," which a jury would evaluate, O'Connor found.

The judge reaffirmed his earlier findings, when denying ADL's motion to dismiss, that its statements about Sabal "were all plausibly provably false statements." In light of legal discovery and further briefing, "when placed within the meaning and context of the entire publication in which they appear," each statement is "written as to imply assertions of verifiable fact."

Even the names of the publications "indicate to a reasonable person that their information is factual, not opinion," O'Connor wrote.

He gave credence to Sabal's allegation that the glossary, published by ADL's Center on Extremism, portrays him as "a dangerous, extremist threat, and even a criminal." 

It says the "extremist ideas [Sabal] promotes can induce violence by others" and his supposed conspiracy theories "usually" inspire "believers to take action against" others, which a jury could find defamation by implication, O'Connor wrote: "ADL does not portray itself as an organization fighting opinions with which it disagrees."

ADL's truth defense fails because Sabal "immediately clarified" his call for "open rebellion" against President Biden meant a "nonviolent 'mutiny,'"  and his call for "military tribunals" to try civilians is not criminal, though such tribunals would be unconstitutional, O'Connor said.

The judge cannot "infer criminality" from Sabal's post saying he planned to go to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, and his invocation of Fifth Amendment rights "when asked about the subject/date in his deposition," the opinion says.

One of the sleeper findings in O'Connor's ruling is that republication of the glossary link in the "Lone Star State" report is not "time-barred," because "the new audience" for the glossary – Texans – "is inescapable."

The truth defense failed on the report, which referred to "antisemitic incidents, hate crimes, and terrorist activities" in connection with Sabal's 2021 "QAnon-themed" event, meaning "a reasonable reader could objectively understand the publication’s context as making a factual assertion that Sabal’s events are associated with such criminal activity," O'Connor wrote.