Representative Nima Kulkarni (D-Louisville) has pre-filed an anti-SLAPP bill to be known as the "Kentucky Public Participation Act."

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/20rs/prefiled/BR901.html

SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

https://youtu.be/UN8bJb8biZU (Viewer discretion advised.)

If enacted, the bill will bring Kentucky into line with 30 other states that have already adopted legislation aimed at diffusing lawsuits aimed at "harassing active citizens out of the public sphere" or, simply stated, bullying dissenters into silence.

The bill's Preamble identifies its purpose and aim:

AN ACT relating to legal actions concerning the exercise of a person's constitutional rights.

WHEREAS, the purpose of this Act is to encourage and safeguard the constitutional rights of persons to petition, to speak freely, to associate freely, and to participate in government to the fullest extent permitted by law and to protect the rights of persons to file meritorious lawsuits for demonstrable injury; and

WHEREAS, this Act is consistent with and necessary to implement the rights protected by Section 1 and Section 8 of the Constitution of Kentucky, as well as by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; and

WHEREAS, this Act is intended to provide an additional substantive remedy to protect the constitutional rights of parties and to supplement any remedies which are otherwise available to those parties under common law, statutory law, or constitutional

law, or under the Kentucky Rules of Civil Procedure."

The four page bill, if enacted, will add a new section the Chapter 454 of the Kentucky Revised Statutes relating to "Miscellaneous Civil Practice Provisions."

Much has been written about whether government lawsuits against public records requesters might be considered anti-SLAPP laws.

https://journals.flvc.org/civic/article/view/119008

https://journals.flvc.org/civic/article/view/119008/11688

Kentucky's open records law establishes the right of a party — public agency or citizen —aggrieved by an open records or meetings decision issued by the Attorney General to challenge that decision in the circuit courts.

Some have characterized the University of Kentucky's legal action against its student newspaper, The Kernel, as a SLAPP.

In 2016 the university sued the newspaper and it's editor in a circuit court appeal of a Kentucky Attorney General's open records decision favoring the newspaper. The attorney genera concluded that the university violated the open records law in denying The Kernel's request for records relating to complaints of sexual harassment made by students against a professor. The case is ongoing.

Others have characterized a 2017 lawsuit filed by the Finance and Administration Cabinet against reporter Alfred Miller, rather than the newspaper for which he worked, The State Journal, after he received a favorable ruling from the attorney general in an open meetings appeal as a SLAPP.

Because Kentucky's open government laws expressly authorized these lawsuits, it's unlikely they could properly be considered SLAPPs.

But a 2017 lawsuit filed by the City of Taylorsville against local government watchdog Lawrence Trageser almost certainly constitutes a SLAPP.

The city appealed an adverse ruling from the attorney general in an open records dispute with Trageser, a persistent local government critic, and sued him in Spencer Circuit Court seeking reversal of the attorney general's decision. Trageser had obtained additional city records from another source and published the records on his blog.

In the lawsuit, the city demanded reversal of the open records decision issued by the attorney general *and* compensatory and punitive damages from Trageser for publication of records he obtained through unofficial channels. The city lost its case in the Spencer Circuit Court, but appealed the case to the Kentucky Court of Appeals. It, too, is ongoing.

Rep. Kulkarni's bill will not impede the statutorily recognized right of a public agency to appeal an adverse open records or meetings decision.

But it is an imperative in an era when cities sue open records requesters for punitive and compensatory damages, or, for that matter, veiled threats of legal action against teachers protesting at the Capitol are made by those who once occupied the highest elective office in the Commonwealth.