CV NEWS FEED // After an Indiana court dismissed a defamation lawsuit against the University of Notre Dame’s The Irish Rover on Monday, the former editor-in-chief said that the lawsuit has had both positive and negative effects on the student newspaper.
Joseph DeReuil, editor-in-chief emeritus, current opinion editor, and a senior at Notre Dame, told CatholicVote that several students and professors “have reached out with very positive responses to the news, for which I have been very grateful.” He added that he has even received encouragement from pro-abortion individuals as well.
CatholicVote reported in July that pro-abortion Professor Tamara Kay filed a defamation lawsuit against The Irish Rover after students ran two stories about her pro-abortion advocacy on campus.
After months of legal proceedings, an Indiana court dismissed the case and found that Kay’s claims of defamation were baseless. According to a post on X from The Irish Rover, the court also dismissed the lawsuit under Indiana’s “Anti-SLAPP law,” which protects the free speech rights of journalists and publications from threatening and groundless lawsuits.
DeReuil, who is preparing for his final semester at Notre Dame, said that he was “grateful” that the dismissal came when it did.
“If the case was not dismissed now, it could have dragged on even beyond graduation, which I was hoping to avoid, so I am very grateful that the dismissal came through,” he said.
DeReuil added that he “never worried about losing the case outright.”
“I was confident throughout the legal proceedings that we would prevail, since I knew we had the truth on our side, but it was a huge relief when that was finally confirmed by the court,” he continued:
My efforts were focused on whether we could demonstrate in the pre-trial hearing that the evidence was so overwhelmingly on our sides as to meet the summary judgment standard necessary for dismissal under Indiana Anti-SLAPP law.
DeReuil said that one negative outcome of the lawsuit was that it created a sense of “distrust” among students and faculty on campus last semester.
“I definitely felt last semester, while the lawsuit was ongoing, it was more difficult to get professors or administrators to respond to requests for comment on articles, as if there were some sort of distrust,” he said.
DeReuil added that many people who either supported or disagreed with The Irish Rover usually had nothing but their personal preference for the Rover’s mission to back up their opinion.
“It was frustrating that very few people who made assumptions either way actually read any of the case materials, which, as was confirmed in court on Monday, made it clear that we told the truth and acted in good faith,” he said.
DeReuil said that he “would like to think that the battle is over, at least on campus,” and added that the Rover has received a lot of support from different quarters.
“Even before the case was dismissed, several pro-choice individuals whom I know who had read into the lawsuit expressed their confidence and hope that the Rover would prevail in our motion to dismiss, recognizing that, even if they disagree with our mission, we had not done anything wrong,” he said. “So I hope that this dismissal will only serve to reinvigorate everyone involved.”
