Shady Leftist Group Weaponizes Consumer Protection Law to Silence Fox News, Network Fights Back

A shady liberal group filed a lawsuit against Fox News, attempting to restrain the network's coronavirus coverage and get Fox News slapped with hefty penalties. The Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics (WASHLITE), which appears not to have a public website, filed a lawsuit against Fox, claiming that when Sean Hannity and Trish Regan condemned the left for using the coronavirus to attack President Donald Trump they had minimized the threat of the coronavirus, endangering viewers and violating Washington State's Consumer Protection Act (CPA).

On Tuesday, Fox News filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, citing the First Amendment right to free speech.

"It’s Constitutional Law 101: the First Amendment protects our right to speak openly and freely on matters of public concern. If WASHLITE doesn’t like what we said, it can criticize us, but it can’t silence us with a lawsuit," Fox News General Counsel and Executive Vice President Lily Fu Claffee said in a statement.

The motion condemns WASHLITE's complaint as a "frontal assault on the freedom of speech" that "flagrantly violates the First Amendment and fails to state a claim."

The WASHLITE complaint cites two examples of Fox News segments that they claim violate the Washington Consumer Protection Act, which bans "unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce." The act does not apply to television broadcasting stations that distribute information "in good faith without knowledge of its false, deceptive or misleading character."

When Donald Trump himself condemned liberal attacks against him over the coronavirus as a "hoax," liberal outlets and Democrats falsely claimed the president called the virus itself a hoax, but fact-checkers defended the president. The Trump campaign is now suing a Wisconsin TV station for airing an ad making the false claim. Hannity and Regan were doing something similar, and WASHLITE is trying to weaponize the same false narrative.

SOURCE