A pro-life activist and his group can’t be sued for defamation for calling pro-abortion groups “criminal organizations,” the Supreme Court of Texas ruled.

The court ruled (pdf) on Feb. 24 that pro-life activist Mark Lee Dickson need not face defamation claims in lower courts because he was expressing a constitutionally protected opinion.

The case is the Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity v. Dickson.

The self-described mission of petitioner Lilith Fund is to “foster a positive culture around abortion” and “provide financial assistance and emotional support while building community spaces for people who need abortions in Texas—unapologetically, with compassion and conviction.”

The respondents are Dickson and Right to Life East Texas, which states that it’s “teaching respect for life from conception till natural death.” Dickson is director of the group and founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn initiative.

Dickson and colleagues pressed towns in Texas to enact ordinances that outlaw abortion. On Facebook, they said abortion is murder and that groups supporting it such as the Lilith Fund are criminal.

One of the towns that passed such an ordinance was Waskom, Texas, in Harrison County. That June 2019 law declared that abortion was “an act of murder with malice aforethought” and made it a crime to aid or abet most abortions if the U.S. Supreme Court ever overturned Roe v. Wade, which it did in June 2022. The ordinance originally identified the Lilith Fund and other pro-abortion groups as “criminal organizations” but a year later the reference to specific groups was removed.

“One would expect the groups … to sue the city, but instead [they] sued Dickson and Right to Life East Texas for their use of terms from the ordinance,” law professor Jonathan Turley said.

The Lilith Fund and the other pro-abortion groups demanded that Dickson and Right to Life East Texas retract the claim that they were “criminal organizations” and to “specifically clarify that neither you, nor to your knowledge anyone else, has any evidence or reason to believe that any of the organizations … nor any of their agents has committed any acts in violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state or local government.”

Dickson and his group failed to retract and were sued by the Lilith Fund in one county and another pro-abortion group in another. The pro-abortion groups claimed that Dickson’s statements were defamatory because they connected the groups with “literal, criminal murder” and that Right to Life East Texas participated in a “conspiracy to commit defamation” by allowing Dickson to post his statement on its Facebook page.

The new Supreme Court of Texas opinion recounts that the Lilith Fund argued that the ordinance itself was “part of the defamation, not merely context for it” and that Dickson assisted in drafting it and lobbied for its passage. But Lilith could cite no authorities to support its claim that a “speaker who republishes the contents of a city ordinance may be held liable for defamation based on the content of the ordinance.”

Dickson moved to dismiss, arguing that it can’t be defamatory to quote a city ordinance and that his use of the word “murder” wasn’t literal but rather an expression of his view that abortion is tantamount to murder. Dickson’s “tone and language” were “exhortatory, not factual,” the opinion states.

“Considering the context available to a reasonable reader, we hold that the plaintiffs failed to adduce specific evidence that Dickson’s statements were defamatory,” the opinion reads, remanding the case to lower courts for reconsideration.

Representatives for The Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity and Right to Life of East Texas didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

But Dickson told The Texan, “We are grateful that the Supreme Court of Texas unanimously ruled that the First Amendment protects speech and advocacy in favor of ordinances that outlaw and criminalize the activities of Texas abortion funds.

“We will continue to advocate for the criminal prosecution of Texas abortion funds and their donors, who have violated the state’s pre-Roe abortion statutes by aiding or abetting elective abortions in Texas.”

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Feb. 26, 2023, in The Epoch Times.