FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Transgender activists are “weaponizing” a law meant to protect participation in public debate, flipping it “on its head” to further a “personal vendetta” against a Georgia mom and real estate agent whom the activists previously tried to get fired, the mom’s lawyer says.
Julie Mauck, the Georgia mom, publicly addressed a library meeting in July 2023, asking the library to move a sexually explicit book out of the children’s section, and warning that some pedophiles try to claim membership in the LGBTQ+ acronym as part of the “plus.” Transgender activists reached out to her broker and to the Georgia Association of Realtors, claiming that she called “the entire LGBTQ community ‘pedophiles’” and urging disciplinary action.
Mauck sued, and both a trial court and the Georgia Court of Appeals struck down her claim under the Peach State’s anti-SLAPP law. (Anti-SLAPP refers to “strategic lawsuits against public participation.” Such statutes aim to protect Americans from baseless legal attacks meant to stifle public debate.) Jonathan Vogel, Mauck’s attorney, filed an appeal Monday, asking the Georgia Supreme Court to take up the case.
“Should the anti-SLAPP statute be weaponized to enable cancel culture tactics like this?” Vogel asked in an interview with The Daily Signal on Monday. “Surely, it was not enacted for this purpose. It really turns the anti-SLAPP statute on its head.”
“Julie’s speech at the library, that’s the classic protected speech that the anti-SLAPP statute was enacted to protect,” he argued. He called it “outrageous” for “people who mischaracterize what she said and tried to get her fired” to claim the anti-SLAPP law should protect them.
Doug Turpin, president of The Coalition for Liberty, a nonprofit aiming to combat cancel culture that is paying Mauck’s legal fees, warned that the appeals court ruling sets a terrifying precedent. He noted that when courts dismiss a claim based on anti-SLAPP, the party bringing the lawsuit may have to pay the legal fees of the wrongly accused party.
“If this decision is allowed to stand, any activist out there can knowingly lie about a person, get them fired, destroy their reputation, and then if somebody tries to fight back, they will be paying the legal fees,” he told The Daily Signal.
“You just want to shake somebody and say, ‘Are you not listening to what happened? It’s really OK to make up a lie about somebody and try to get them fired based on a lie and that’s OK?’” Mauck, who is also involved with Moms for Liberty, told The Daily Signal.
By Tyler O’Neill
Tyler O’Neil@Tyler2ONeil
Tyler O’Neil is senior editor at The Daily Signal and the author of two books: “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” and “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”
