Phoenix Attorneys Win Free Speech Case

On July 1, 2005, the Arizona Supreme Court held that the First Amendment barred a tort suit against the Tucson Citizen arising from the newspaper's publication of a controversial letter to the editor about the war in Iraq.  In Citizen Publishing Co. v. Miller, the newspaper was sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress after it published a letter that invoked Machiavelli and suggested the execution of innocent Muslims to deter further violence in Iraq.  The Court's unanimous opinion held that the letter did not fall "within one of the well-recognized narrow exceptions to the general rule of First Amendment protection for political speech," and therefore the newspaper "cannot be held liable under Arizona tort law for publishing this letter."  The Court emphasized the significance of the case by accepting jurisdiction over an interlocutory special action challenging the denial of a motion to dismiss, which the court noted it would do only "rarely."

Steptoe attorneys David Bodney, Peter Kozinets, and Chris Moeser represented Citizen Publishing in the appeal, which David Bodney argued before the Arizona Supreme Court in a special sitting at Arizona State University College of Law.