Neo-nazi site publisher’s lawyer: Suit risk to free speech

HELENA, Mont. — A federal judge’s decision to allow a lawsuit to proceed against the publisher of a neo-nazi website is “dangerous for free speech,” the publisher’s attorney said Thursday.

Attorney Marc Randazza said

U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen made a legally flawed decision Wednesday in ruling the First Amendment does not shield Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin from being sued for his followers’ anti-semitic harassment of a Jewish woman and her family in Montana.

Randazza said he can “see the allure of not wanting to rule in favor of the Nazi” but suggested the decision could be used to curtail free speech in many other forums.

“The rule needs to be the same no matter what your view is,” he said.

Christensen’s decision allows Tanya Gersh to proceed with her claims that Anglin invaded her privacy, inflicted emotional distress on her and her family and violated Montana’s anti-intimidation law by calling on his followers to unleash a “troll storm” on her, her husband and her 12-year-old son.

David Dinielli, the deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing Gersh, said in a statement that the ruling “underscores what both we and our client have said from the beginning of this case — that online campaigns of hate, threats, and intimidation have no place in a civil society.”