Fox News Media and its parent Fox Corp (FOXA.O) won a ruling on Monday, dismissing a lawsuit by a former Biden administration official who accused the media giant of defaming her as a proponent of censorship. Chief U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly in Delaware ruled that Nina Jankowicz, who resigned from her U.S. Department of Homeland Security post in May 2022, could not substantiate her defamation claims.
Jankowicz sued Fox last year, claiming the company’s broadcasts forced her to resign from the Disinformation Governance Board. She alleged that Fox had “intentionally trafficked in malicious falsehoods to pad its profits.” Fox denied the claims. Fox News Media, in a statement on Monday, expressed satisfaction with the decision, describing the case as “a politically motivated lawsuit aimed at silencing free speech.”
Jankowicz’s lawyers expressed disagreement with the order and announced plans to appeal. The Disinformation Governance Board quickly drew criticism from conservative critics of President Joe Biden and others after its formation in 2022. The administration suspended the board’s work in May 2022, and it was dissolved later that year.
Connolly’s ruling stated that most of the Fox News statements in the lawsuit targeted the board, not Jankowicz directly. He also noted that viewers would likely have understood the statements as protected opinion.
“It is undisputed that from the time its existence was announced by DHS, the Disinformation Governance Board was a hypercharged subject of political debate,” Connolly wrote. He also characterized the board’s objective “as a form of censorship.”
Last year, Fox Corp agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems, which claimed that Fox News broadcast false allegations that the company’s voting machines were involved in a conspiracy to rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election. As part of the settlement, Fox acknowledged “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”
