When did it become acceptable to be sued for expressing an opinion? Was there a suspension of the 1st Amendment when it came to petitioning your elected representatives? Or has the state of Florida been so corrupted by corporate interests that the average citizen must be in fear of reprisal by speaking his mind on matters before governmental bodies? Are the interests of the big and moneyed that afraid of someone like Maggie Hurchella that they need the ridiculousness of a SLAPP suit to silence her.
The state of Florida supposedly prides itself on “Open Government.” Somehow, the very idea of silencing an individual for petitioning and addressing her government if she disagrees with those powerful interests seems ludicrous. Do we have “Open Government” for everyone but the individual? The use of the courts as a vehicle to stop legitimate petitioning of one’s government is tyrannical in purpose. It is a corruption of due process that should send waves of disgust through every American.
For too long, both the legislative and executive branches of government on the state and federal level have divided the American people using faulty syllogisms and logic to ferment artificial divides. While at the same time they have eroded our liberties as individual citizens in order to protect the entrenched powers. This is all shown to be true in the farcical SLAPP suit.
Is someone like Ms. Hurchalla, whether through writing or by speaking at public meetings, so menacing to companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars that she should be silenced by the courts? Has Florida become a state resembling those depicted in the works of Koestler and Kafka? Does uttering opinion and sharing one’s beliefs with their government, to be equated when directed against the interest of the powerful, as so dangerous as to be treated as a wrongful act?
Even if one were to presume that someone such as Maggie Hurchalla was mistaken in everything she said or wrote to her government, are her words so powerful that she should be sued for her opinion? Is the price one pays for a political disagreement thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees? This is judicial intimidation of the worse sort by instilling fear and to prevent invoking one’s first amendment rights. Slander and libel are not in question, but free speech is in our state. There is no place for this type of judicial travesty.