Examples of FIRAC analysis

1. NEW YORK TIMES v SULLIVAN, 1964

FACTS: The Committee to Defend Martin Luther King placed an advertisement in the New York Times in March 1960. It was headlined “Heed their Rising Voices.” This advertisement promoted the civil rights movement in the South and described the hostile reaction by state and local officials. The ad also contained a few minor inaccuracies.

The police commissioner of Montgomery, Ala., Louis B. Sullivan, was not named in the advertisement, but he filed a libel suit in Alabama state court. At that point, the case was called Sullivan v New York Times.

Sullivan won the case at the Alabama state trial court level. The New York Times filed an appeal with the Alabama state appeals court, and lost, and then with the state Supreme Court, and lost again. Those cases were called New York Times v Sullivan. (Notice how the plaintiff or appellant is the first named in the case, and how case names change as winners and losers change places).

The New York Times then petitioned for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, and it was granted. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in January, 1964.

ISSUE:  To what extent does the First Amendment limit a libel suit by a public official against a private citizen?

In its decision supporting the New York Times, the U.S. Supreme Court held “… that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on public officials.” For a public official to successfully sue for libel, he or she would have to prove “actual malice,” — knowingly publishing something false or reckless disregard for the truth.

RULE: The opinion starts by mildly objecting to Sullivan’s status as a plaintiff, notes a lack of damages, then discusses the state court procedure.

The opinion goes on to note that no state libel law can be insulated from federal Constitutional standards (in other words, batting down the state’s rights argument), The opinion also notes that political advertising cannot be more regulated than political speech (although commercial advertising, at that time, was not seen as having the same protections as political speech).

The court then goes through prior cases, noting that they do not (as Sullivan claimed) stop citizens from criticizing public officials. In fact, the court noted that a public official was found (in a prior case) to have a duty to criticize a member of the public. By the same logic, the public certainly has not only a right but also a duty to criticize public officials.

The court also digressed into a complex historical discussion, noting the relationship of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 to the question of freedom of political speech and sedition. There is an underlying current of criticism in this opinion having to do with Southern resistance to the civil rights movement. The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions were not only reactions to federal sedition laws, but they were also used to justify Southern secession in 1860. The question of a state’s sovereignty was settled by the Civil War and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Thus, state laws were said to be “incorporated” under federal jurisdiction, especially with regard to Constitutional liberties under the Bill of Rights.

The court then considers the argument for a qualified privilege for citizens to discuss public officials, and then provides a standard by which future cases can be judged — the actual malice standard. Under this actual malice or “Sullivan standard,” a public official could successfully sue for libel only if a publisher knowingly published something false or was in “reckless disregard for the truth.” Errors of fact, if published without malice, would not be enough to win a libel suit.

ANALYSIS:   It’s fairly easy for a society to lose sight of its values and persecute its critics, and no critic, however well-intentioned, can speak perfectly on every occasion. By insisting that free speech be respected, and that minor errors could not be prosecuted, the courts helped the civil rights movement find an effective and non-violent path to social change. Without the give – and – take of free speech in a democracy, non-violent change is far less likely, and social tensions can build to explosive levels.

CONCLUSION:  NY Times v Sullivan was a powerful decision that protected the First Amendment and had a profound effect on US social and political systems.

UPDATE: At least two of the nine US Supreme Court judges would like to revisit the Sullivan case with the idea of strengthening punishments for libel and weakening press protection, according to this ABA article.

2. SIPPLE V CHRONICLE PUBLISHING, 1984

FACTS: On September 23, 1975, Oliver Sipple happened to be in the right place at the right time. In the photo, the ex-marine lunges for Sara Jane Moore (woman behind the pole), who has just fired a shot in the direction of President Gerald Ford  (not in the image) as he left a political meeting in San Francisco. Sipple prevented Moore from firing a second shot, and President Ford was not hurt.

The next day, the Los Angeles Times reported:

“A husky ex-marine who was a hero in the attempted assassination of President Ford emerged Wednesday as a prominent figure in the gay community. And questions were raised in the gay community if Oliver (Bill) Sipple, 32, was being shunned by the White  House because of his associations. Sipple, who  lunged at Sara Jane Moore and deflected her   revolver as she fired at the President, conceded that he is a member of the ‘court’ of Mike Caringi, who was elected ’emperor of San Francisco’ by the gay community.

So Sipple’s past as a homosexual became part of the story of his heroism. Unfortunately, it also led to breaking off relations with his family in Michigan and a great deal of personal pain.

Sipple sued the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers for revealing his secret life, but he lost the suits because he had become a public figure and questions about his character were deemed newsworthy.

BACKGROUND: Around the time this happened, hundreds of marines were being discharged every year for being homosexual.  See this article in LGBTQ Nation.

RULE: “There can be no privacy with respect to a matter which is already public or which has previously become part of the ‘public domain.’ Once the information is released, unlike a physical object, it cannot be recaptured and sealed,” a California court said in Sipple v. Chronicle Publishing.

ANALYSIS: Libel (defamation) is about untrue statements that hurt a person’s reputation. But what about true statements that hurt private people by invading their privacy? When does the public’s right to know supersede an individual’s right to privacy? The decision in the Sipple case noted that while the principle of individual rights is vital, it must be balanced against other public rights, and for good reason. As the public came to know about Sipple, it had to reconcile archaic ideas about personal behavior against the obvious example of heroism. Although Oliver Sipple suffered, the truth changed the course of history.

CONCLUSION: The Sipple case changed the way Americans saw homosexuality, and while most people could sympathize with Sipple and object to the way he had been treated, the idea that LGBTQ orientation is immoral or outrageous was now exposed as prejudiced and illogical.  The case also changed the way the press reported homosexuality, eventually moving from sensationalistic shock  to acceptance of one aspect of our common human  condition.