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Another piece of the proposed changes to Nevada’s anti-SLAPP law, this time from our friends over at Techdirt:

"We’ve mentioned many times the importance of anti-SLAPP laws in protecting people who are being sued solely to try to shut them up. It’s still a travesty that we don’t have a federal anti-SLAPP law but are reliant on various state anti-SLAPP laws. In case you’re not familiar with them, SLAPP stands for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.” Anti-SLAPP laws basically allow people who are sued to quickly get lawsuits dismissed when it’s obvious that the entire point of the lawsuit is to silence whoever is being sued, rather than for any legitimate legal purpose. For years, California was seen as having one of the best anti-SLAPP laws, but in recent years both Texas and Nevada upped the ante in anti-SLAPP laws, making them even stronger. Nevada’s had a particularly useful feature: it would award “reasonable costs, attorney’s fees and monetary relief” for defendants who were wrongfully hit with SLAPP suits. Basically, it provided a real deterrent against SLAPP suits.

From our friend Popehat:

"In 2013 Nevada passed the strongest anti-SLAPP statutes in the United States. This statute was muscular. Not only did it cover a wide array of speech, and require substantial proof of the potential validity of a claim, it had frills like a potential $10,000 penalty on top of attorney fees for SLAPPers and a private cause of action so targets of SLAPP suits could sue their tormentors. My friend and colleague Marc Randazza, First Amendment badass, helped frame it, which is why it was so strong. It’s already proven effective in Nevada’s courts. It’s an excellent tool to protect free speech from meritless lawsuits.

So who in the Nevada Senate Judiciary Committee is trying to kill it, and why?"

Read more here.