Liberty Counsel filed the opening brief to the California Court of Appeal on behalf of Jews for Jesus seeking dismissal of a frivolous defamation lawsuit on anti-SLAPP grounds. The defamation lawsuit, brought by alleged Orthodox Jewish teacher and aspiring rabbi Ariel Amitay, claims Jews for Jesus deliberately defamed him by using a blurred, stock photo on social media that he says associated him with their Christian outreach ministry.

Jews for Jesus seeks dismissal of the case under California’s anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statute, where lawsuits cannot be used to intimidate or silence others from exercising their First Amendment rights, including religious outreach and expression. Jews for Jesus is appealing a lower court decision that partially sided with Amitay stating his claims had “minimal merit.”

However, Liberty Counsel argues the lawsuit should be dismissed in its entirety because no reasonable viewer would interpret the blurred picture, which even used another person’s name in the caption, to be false or defamatory toward Amitay. Holding otherwise, the brief notes, would be to invite other frivolous lawsuits involving First Amendment-protected religious speech which anti-SLAPP laws guard against.

Amitay’s lawsuit claims that Jews for Jesus intentionally associated him with its distribution of Bibles in the wake of the October 7 attacks. Jews for Jesus used a stock photo of an Israeli soldier from a popular website that provides millions of stock photographs under a worldwide copyright license to download, modify, and use for free. Even though Jews for Jesus deliberately used a facial blur, never used Amitay’s name, and even used the pseudonymous name “Nachman” in the photo’s caption, Amitay alleges he is the man in the photo, and that Jews for Jesus used the photo to personally 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. 

However, Liberty Counsel’s brief notes that under legal precedents viewers would need to understand that Jews for Jesus’ post was specifically referring to Amitay for it to be defamatory—something highly implausible given the blurred photo with a pseudonym.

Two legal precedents involving stock photographs illustrate this point. In Houseman v. Publicaciones Paso del Norte, a Texas customs agent sued a newspaper for placing an unidentified picture of him working at a checkpoint next to an article about a corrupt customs official taking bribes from drug traffickers. The court sided with the newspaper since the article identified the corrupt official by name in the article where no reasonable reader would have been misled to believe the unidentified agent in the photo was that corrupt agent. 

In a similar case, Grimsley v. CBS Broadcasting, Inc., a federal court sided with a law enforcement officer rather than the media because of a different circumstance.  In this case, CBS ran a story about two sheriff’s deputies who were fired in connection with the death of a mentally ill detainee. The story prominently featured a stock photo of a sheriff not involved in the story, yet his name was visible in the photo. Even though the article identified the two sheriffs involved in the incident, a federal court sided against CBS ruling that the sheriff’s name in the photo was defamatory since it plausibly connected him to the incident.

Both Houseman and Grimsley signify that for media content to be defamatory it must “unmistakably” convey to a reasonable reader an identity in connection to the alleged defamation. Since Amitay was not named, captioned, or expressly identified at all, Amitay’s claims fail, wrote Liberty Counsel. 

Amitay filed the lawsuit on Christmas Eve 2024 seeking no less than $5 million in punitive damages. 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. Liberty Counsel’s motion also requests attorney’s fees and costs against the plaintiff. 

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Jews for Jesus’ posts are not factual assertions about Ariel Amitay and fail to convey any defamatory statement about him personally. The posts were a part of a larger religious expression about giving Bibles to Israeli soldiers that did not in any way portray or identify anyone in support of its religious views. Amitay cannot use the courts for a baseless defamation lawsuit to punish or suppress legitimate speech and religious expression. Jews for Jesus’ speech and religious expression is protected by the First Amendment. These baseless claims need to be dismissed.”