Liberty Counsel filed a motion in the Superior Court of California for San Francisco County on behalf of Jews for Jesus to dismiss a baseless defamation lawsuit brought by an alleged Orthodox Jewish teacher and aspiring rabbi. The motion was originally filed in U.S. District Court in March 2025. However, the case was remanded to the state court which will host a hearing in the case on June 20.

The lawsuit claims that Jews for Jesus intentionally associated a Jewish teacher, Ariel Amitay, with its Christian outreach ministry on its social media platforms to specifically defame him. However, Liberty Counsel’s motion states that Amitay’s lawsuit, which fails to provide concrete facts to support his claims, is rather an attempt to “weaponize defamation law” to hinder the Christian outreach mission of Jews for Jesus. This type of lawsuit, known as SLAPP, is prohibited under California law. Liberty Counsel’s motion to dismiss the case requests attorney’s fees and costs against the plaintiff.

Under California’s anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statute, lawsuits cannot be used to intimidate or silence others from exercising their First Amendment rights, including religious outreach and expression. Liberty Counsel seeks to dismiss the case because Jews for Jesus did not act with actual malice and because the lawsuit is “impermissible” under the state’s anti-SLAPP law.

The case centers around Jews for Jesus using a royalty-free stock photo of an Israeli soldier on its social media platform to illustrate its distribution of Bibles in the wake of the October 7 attacks. Jews for Jesus included a message from a thankful soldier in the caption and even blurred out the face of the random soldier in the photo. The stock photo was obtained and published by Jews for Jesus from a popular website that provides millions of stock photographs under a worldwide copyright license to download, use, modify and distribute for free, without permission from or attributing its source.

According to the lawsuit, Amitay alleges he is the man in the blurred, stock photo that was widely available for free download and use worldwide. Even though Jews for Jesus deliberately used a facial blur, never used Amitay’s name, and even used someone else’s name in the photo’s caption, Amitay alleges that Jews for Jesus used the photo to defame him and cast him in a false light, and that this was “willful, malicious, and oppressive.” Amitay, who describes himself as a “conservative follower of Judaism” with “starkly different views” than Jews for Jesus, stated the organization blatantly used the photo to “disgrace, defame, and injure” him by suggesting that he personally endorsed its Christian ministry. Despite the blurred face and never being named, Amitay maintains that the photo created such a false impression of him that it caused his employer to terminate him from his “dream” teaching job. 

In the motion, Liberty Counsel noted that despite the “glaring holes in his story,” Amitay filed suit on Christmas Eve 2024 seeking no less than $5 million in punitive damages.

Liberty Counsel wrote, “Amitay’s lawsuit is precisely the kind that California’s anti-SLAPP statute was designed to stop in its tracks.” Amitay’s complaint rests on an inherently flawed premise: that a publicly available photograph—blurred, uncredited, and without his name—somehow constituted a deliberate effort to falsely associate him with Jews for Jesus. That premise is “categorially false,” and while Amitay may disagree with Jews for Jesus’ Christian ministry, he also cannot overcome its First Amendment-protected speech or the baseless attempt to manufacture a lawsuit out of it, stated Liberty Counsel.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “It is clearly evident that Jews for Jesus’ posts are not factual assertions about Ariel Amitay. Jews for Jesus’ social media posts were a part of a larger religious expression about giving Bibles to Israeli soldiers that did not in any way portray or identify Amitay in support of its religious views. Amitay cannot use the courts through a baseless defamation lawsuit to punish or suppress legitimate speech and religious expression. Jews for Jesus’ speech and religious advocacy is protected by the First Amendment and this lawsuit must be dismissed.”