GOP lawmaker allegedly called a child f*g. He’s suing a newspaper for reporting on it.

A small newspaper in northern Wisconsin is facing mountains of legal bills as a Republican state lawmaker tries to sue them into oblivion after they reported that he called a 13-year-old a “f*g” at a county board meeting in 2021.

The newspaper, which has only four employees, has already racked up $150,000 in legal bills defending themselves from the Republican’s legal attacks, even though a judge already dismissed his defamation suit as meritless.

Related:

Wisconsin Republicans now want to let children serve alcohol in restaurants

“This literally creates the perfect scenario for somebody to be groomed.”

“Every time I open the mail, I want to throw up,” Shereen Siewert, the editor of the Wausau Pilot & Review, told the New York Times. “Those dollars could be going to pay reporters for boots on the ground coverage, not paying legal fees for a lawsuit that appears designed to crush us.”

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.

Daily

Weekly

Good News

The incident allegedly occurred in August 2021 at the Marathon County Courthouse in Wausau, Wisconsin. No reporters were at the meeting, but the incident where state Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R) allegedly called a 13-year-old a “f*g” was discussed on social media.

A Pilot & Review reporter investigated and talked to the teen’s mother, who explained what happened. Three other people who were present at the meeting corroborated her story. So the Pilot & Review published what happened.

Tomczyk demanded they retract the article, denying that he had called the teen that slur. When they refused, he sued.

Tomczyk admitted during a deposition to having used that slur in other occasions: “I have a brother who is a gay guy, and I’ve certainly out of joking and out of spite called him a ‘fa***t’ more than once.”

He said, though, that his reputation was hurt by the article. He had a witness from the meeting who said that she hadn’t heard him use the slur, unlike the other four people who did. He also said that the Pilot & Review wasn’t present at the meeting and they shouldn’t have reported what the witnesses said happened.

This is a far cry from proving that the Pilot & Review acted with “actual malice,” the standard required in cases where public figures like state lawmakers sue for defamation. Under that standard, Tomczyk had to prove that the Pilot & Review either knew that what they printed wasn’t true or acted with a reckless disregard for their reporting’s falseness.

In April 2023 – a year and a half later – a judge dismissed Tomczyk’s lawsuit. But he’s still appealing that decision in a process that could continue for years and Siewert is wondering how the small-town paper is going to pay its legal bills.

“We were really humming along,” she said about the newspaper, which was founded in 2017 and got attention for its coverage of drinking water contamination. “Then this happened.”

“The vulnerabilities these news organizations face from these lawsuits is really, really tremendous,” Vivian Schiller of the organization Aspen Digital. “And yes, they can be sued into oblivion.”

Many states – but not Wisconsin – have anti-SLAPP laws that prevent corporations and wealthy individuals from using the legal system to squelch free speech. Under such laws, journalists and others who have been sued can file a motion to dismiss a lawsuit if the case involves free speech. If the person suing can’t show that they have a chance at winning, the suit is dismissed and they might have to pay attorney’s fees for the defendant.

Tomscyk, who owns an industrial recycling company, won his first election to the state legislature last year after getting involved in politics by protesting COVID-19 prevention measures.

“A lot of this is driven by national issues: open borders. We don’t have a southern border,” he told WSAW-TV last year during his campaign in rural Wisconsin for the Wisconsin State Senate. “There’s too many people coming across. Too many people that we don’t know enough about.”

He said voters “want to stop the madness” and “want traditional values.”

“They want a return to the way it was.”

“I’m worried that we’re becoming Putin’s Russia or Chavez’s Venezuela,” he added.