corecivic – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Private Prison Companies Are Absolutely Thrilled Donald Trump Won The Election

from the shitbirds-of-a-feather dept

Well, these entities deserve each other. The problem is we really don’t deserve either of them.

Trump spent a lot of his campaign touting a logistical nightmare of a policy that sounded a lot like an collapse-of-the-Weimar-Republic sort of thing: the mass detention and deportation of immigrants, whether they’re here legally or not. All that’s missing now are the rail cars and the genocide.

It’s an ugly plan that’s going to have extremely ugly outcomes, all based on bigotry and demonstrably false claims about the inherent “danger” posed by undocumented immigrants. Ignorance and hatred are going to be weaponized to tear apart families, destroy communities, and undermine the ideals this country used to hold dear.

More prisons, more beds, more detention facilities, more logistical support, more transport of detained immigrants — what looks like a horror show to many of us is being greeted with unrestrained glee by the CEOs of this country’s two largest private prison companies. Presumably, many of their shareholders are equally thrilled with this development as well, making them equally complicit in what’s to come.

Listening in on earnings calls was Matt Shuham, who has detailed the contents of these calls for the Huffington Post. It’s pretty harrowing to see something this awful being greeted with this much joy.

“The GEO Group was built for this unique moment in our company’s– country’s history, and the opportunity that it will bring,” George Zoley, GEO Group’s founder andexecutive chairman of the company’s board of directors, said on the call.

[…]

Elsewhere in the call, he referred to a potential “sea change” in interior and border enforcement ― an “unprecedented opportunity” to assist with what he described as the “much more aggressive” policy framework from the incoming Trump administration. Speaking generally, he said, “We’re looking at a theoretical potential doubling of all of our services.”

Yep, sounds truly fantastic. The head of CoreCivic, which is infamous for running understaffed and under-supervised facilities that create dangerous situations for inmates, was equally thrilled to be a part of Trump’s nihilistic mass deportation plans.

“It feels like with this election this year, we’re heading into an era that we really haven’t seen, maybe only once or twice in the company’s history, where the value proposition of the private sector for both our state partners and our federal partners are going to be not only strong today, but even stronger as we go in the next couple of years,” Damon Hininger, CEO of CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, said on that company’s own earnings call.

It’s truly inspiring to hear private prison company CEOs gloat about their contribution to the misery of millions of people. In between the gloating are the details: just how much “growth” they can expect to profit from as Trump moves back into the Oval Office and his compliant party starts putting this plan in action.

GEO Group says it expects to increase the number of beds it supplies to ICE to jump from 13,500 to “over 31,000 beds,” with an expectation that number may hit as high as 85,000 once the program is fully implemented.

CoreCivic will also see its profits increase greatly, since it will possibly now be able to get into the ankle-monitor market now solely handled by GEO Group. ICE appears to believe it can’t rely on a sole source to handle the amount of monitoring it will be doing and is asking around (with its freshly posted Request for Information) to see what other companies might be able to contribute monitors and monitoring services to the mass deportation program. Presumably, ICE expects enough of an increase in need that it simply won’t be possible for GEO Group alone to handle it.

But it’s GEO Group that claims the prize for the most chilling response to what are likely to be some of the nation’s darkest days in American history:

“We believe we have the capabilities to expand the provision of these services to assist ICE in moving several hundreds of thousands of additional individuals if needed.”

Several hundreds of thousands of people being detained, moved, and ejected against their will solely because the incoming president and his administration believes they shouldn’t be here. And the response from these companies is that they’re excited they’re going to be able to profit directly from a program that’s based on nothing but vibes emanating from a cadre of extremely powerful bigots. Fuck them. And fuck Donald Trump. It’s great to know that if this country accelerates its slide toward fascism, it will partially be due to GEO Group and CoreCivic pushing the nation from the back.

Filed Under: donald trump, immigration, mass incarceration, private prisons
Companies: corecivic, geo group

Civil Rights Lawyer Sues Court That Blocked Him From Talking About Private Prison Company

from the shut-up,-CoreCivic-explained dept

A couple of years ago, private prison giant CoreCivic decided it had had enough. It went to court to secure an order blocking noted First Amendment lawyer Daniel Horwitz from talking about it. Horwitz was then currently engaged in multiple lawsuits against the private prison company, the most prominent being his representation of the family of Terry Childress, who died in one of company’s many prisons.

The gist of CoreCivic’s arguments was this: Horwitz was steadily tweeting out public records detailing CoreCivic’s many problematic prisons, as well as negative news coverage of the company and details about inmate deaths. According to CoreCivic, Horwitz’s free speech (and activism on behalf of his clients and their interests) was somehow going to prevent it from prevailing in these lawsuits. Not only that, but some of his social media posts were mean.

Mr. Horwitz’s social media posts are direct, a necessary requirement of Twitter, yet are extraordinarily vicious in their verbiage. Certain of Mr. Horwitz’s social media posts specifically mention Childress and contend that Defendants bear responsibility for his unfortunate death. Indeed, these posts call CoreCivic a “death factory” and contend that CoreCivic “kill[s]” people.

[…]

More than this, Mr. Horwitz’s public comments absolutely will prejudice Defendants’ ability to obtain a fair trial. They are intended for vast public consumption and specifically are directed to Mr. Horwitz’s nearly 8,000 Twitter followers and to the public at large. They have been retweeted and shared multiple times over, significantly increasing their reach. They also have been picked up by local media outlets with incredibly high volumes of readers and viewers, like Channel 4 and The Tennessean. The negative impact on Defendants and on their right to a fair trial with an impartial jury cannot be understated. And, if allowed to continue, the public comments by Mr. Horwitz only will worsen, particularly as the parties begin the written discovery and deposition phase of this lawsuit.

That’s a pretty wild claim. Most defendants are encouraged to not discuss lawsuits publicly in hopes of deterring the accidental release of anything that might undermine their defenses. But plaintiffs can certainly discuss cases if they’d like to without running afoul of civil litigation rules of procedure. And if an industry giant thinks it can’t secure a fair trial because the stuff Horwitz tweeted out portrayed it so negatively, the problem is with CoreCivic, not the factual, damning information being publicly released about it.

The sad thing is the court bought CoreCivic’s arguments and decided to engage in prior restraint. It issued an order that robbed the lawyer of his First Amendment rights, as the Institute for Justice explains.

Way back in July 2022, a federal court in Nashville imposed a gag order that prohibited civil-rights attorney Daniel Horwitz from talking publicly about a wrongful-death case he brought against a private prison. The court applied a local rule that presumes, without any evidence, that an attorney’s public comments about a broad swath of topics will prejudice court proceedings. The rule then imposes a burden on the attorney to prove that his speech is not prejudicial.

With the court refusing to roll back its unconstitutional order, Horwitz was left with the proverbial nuclear option. Represented by the Institute for Justice, Horwitz is suing the court itself to get the rule of procedure abused to silence him overturned as unconstitutional. It’s not often you see a complaint whose only defendants are the court and the judges staffing that court, but you’ll see it here as Horwitz takes on the Middle District of Tennessee and its four judges.

The complaint [PDF] makes it clear preventing a lawyer from talking about issues of public interest just because they also reference a target of his litigation violates the First Amendment.

This isn’t a case involving the publication of privileged communications or documents placed under seal by the court. This involves the dissemination of publicly-available information that should not be silenced just because CoreCivic doesn’t like what this information says about it.

The local rule is the problem here, especially the way the court has chosen to use it here.

Rule 83.04(a)(2) creates a presumption that anything an attorney says publicly about a broad range of things—like the evidence in the case or character of the parties—is likely to impact the proceedings. An attorney who wants to tell the public about his case must overcome that presumption and prove his speech is not prejudicial. But such presumptions against open dialogue are antithetical to the First Amendment.

Attorneys, like everyone else, have a First Amendment right to speak publicly about non-privileged matters. Although a court’s interest in ensuring a fair trial may sometimes justify tailored limitations on attorney speech, a court can restrict an attorney’s public speech only when there is actual evidence that speech will materially impact an impending trial. The further away a trial is, the more difficult it is to carry that burden. An opposing party’s general complaints of negative media coverage are not enough. And even when some statements do meet the high bar of being prejudicial, the court must limit any restrictions on an attorney’s speech to the least burdensome means available. Gag orders like the one imposed on Mr. Horwitz must be a last resort.

For more than two years, CoreCivic has managed to silence Daniel Horwitz. The district court has done all it can to help CoreCivic shut up Horwitz by repeatedly refusing to revisit its ruling or address any filings made in cases affected by this gag order. That leaves Horwitz with the unenviable option of suing the court directly to force a ruling on the merits of his constitutional challenge. For 26 months (following the deletion of months of social media posts), Horwitz has been unable to discuss his cases publicly, rejecting multiple requests from media outlets covering the ongoing litigation.

The only winner here is CoreCivic. And it’s a completely unearned victory. As this lawsuit notes, the rule of procedure is overbroad. On top of that, the way the court has applied it to Horwitz strongly suggests any litigator discussing their (publicly-available) litigation or the targets of their lawsuit in public will likely see themselves silenced as other lawsuit defendants begin to notice Rule 83.02(a)(2) is neat little anti-speech cheat code.

It’s an essential lawsuit. And this complaint is a fun one to read, especially the middle section where Horwitz and the IJ discuss (in a publicly-filed document) all the stuff CoreCivic has managed to prevent Horwitz from disclosing in interviews or via his social media accounts. For instance:

But for Rule 83.04, Mr. Horwitz would have informed the public about how CoreCivic has repeatedly violated his clients’ civil rights, such as recounting:

a. The details of how LaEddie Coleman—the decedent in Tardy—was stabbed to death in a severely understaffed, unsupervised pod at a CoreCivic facility mere minutes after another inmate was stabbed near-fatally in the same unsupervised pod.

b. The details of how Mr. Burchard was knocked unconscious and raped in an understaffed and unsupervised pod in a CoreCivic facility after Mr. Burchard had warned guards of the specific danger he faced, yet they took no steps to protect him..

c. The details of how Mr. Gordon was murdered in an understaffed CoreCivic facility that guards knew was riddled with contraband weapons; how guards knew Mr. Gordon’s life was in danger but took no steps to protect him; and how guards viewed Mr. Gordon’s murder live on a surveillance monitor but did not intervene to save his life as he bled out in an unsupervised pod.

d. The details of how a guard at a CoreCivic facility intentionally slammed a cell door shut on Mr. Shaw’s hand so hard that it severed his finger, and how the guard stood by and laughed at the maiming rather than getting Mr. Shaw immediate medical attention.

e. The details of how guards at a CoreCivic facility knew that an inmate was dangerous, had just assaulted a nurse, and had threatened to do something to get himself sent to maximum security unless CoreCivic transferred him there; and yet CoreCivic still placed that dangerous inmate alone in Mr. Farrar’s cell without bothering to search him for weapons.

You know, stuff like that. Evidence Horwitz plans to introduce in court and, once introduced, the court can then decide whether or not it’s relevant or prejudicial. And, at that point, the burden of proof will be where it should be: CoreCivic will have to demonstrate why this is prejudicial as it’s being presented. It simply should not be given the option to prevent anyone litigating against it from discussing the case at all, much less sharing information about other similarly terrible incidents occurring under the CoreCivic brand.

But it’s tough to get a court to change its mind about its own rules of procedure. And it’s going to be a lot tougher to convince it that it can’t enforce the rule this way without violating litigants’ First Amendment rights. Horwitz is asking for this clause of Rule 83.04 to be struck down for vagueness, as well as its seemingly unconstitutional shifting of the burden of proof to those being targeted with gag orders. Hopefully, he’ll get what he’s asking for. And while he’s litigating this one, hopefully he’ll keep filing motions and briefs containing all the other stuff this gag order has prevented him from saying.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-slapp, daniel horwitz, free speech, prior restraint, private prisons, public records, terry childress
Companies: corecivic

Giant Private Prison Company Goes To Court To Try To Get Lawyer To Stop Tweeting About Them

from the you-can't-control-speech-outside-of-prison-too dept

CoreCivic is one of the nation’s largest private prison companies. And while it should already be concerning that we even have private prison companies, CoreCivic appears to be particularly awful. Just last week, CoreCivic was in the 9th Circuit appeals court trying to overturn a dismissal of its SLAPP lawsuit that it filed against investment firm Candide Group and a Forbes writer, Morgan Simon, for making claims about the company that turned out to be pretty accurate. In the process, CoreCivic is trying to undermine California’s useful anti-SLAPP law by saying it can’t be used in federal court (something the 9th Circuit has already allowed in other cases).

But, back in Tennessee (CoreCivic’s home state), the company is looking to suppress speech in a different way: literally asking a court to issue a gag order on lawyer Daniel Horwitz, who is representing the family of Terry Childress, who died in one of CoreCivic’s hellholes. Horwitz has been tweeting about the case, including revealing some pretty damning documents about the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, where Childress died. Given the possibility that this thread might be memory holed, you can see a PDF of it below, though much of that thread is shown in one of the filings below as well.

CoreCivic didn’t like that. It didn’t like that at all. It complained to Horwitz about his tweeting, and suggested that it would ask the court to stop him from doing so. In response, Horwitz went to court first, asking the judge to rule that he could continue discussing these matters publicly.

In particular, the Plaintiffs move this Court for an order affirming their and their counsel’s First Amendment rights to speak about—and to petition the government for redress regarding—CoreCivic’s pervasive noncompliance with constitutional requirements and safety standards at its Tennessee prison facilities.

CoreCivic then filed a motion making it clear that it really, really wants to shut Horwitz up. The filing specifically asks the court to order Horwitz to “remove all public communications within their control, including social media posts” that CoreCivic claims “would interfere with a fair trial, including commentary regarding this lawsuits or matters at issue in this lawsuit.” CoreCivic’s argument is that Horwitz tweeting about how bad CoreCivic is, complete with documented proof, will somehow bias a jury against CoreCivic. By that standard, any company being sued for anything could silence basically anyone. But that’s not how any of this is supposed to work.

And, of course, all this has actually done is Streisand all this information that CoreCivic doesn’t want you to see about how it runs the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center. CoreCivic’s filing is really quite something, as their main complaint is that Horwitz is just so mean in highlighting documents showing how unsafe Trousdale is and how understaffed it is. From CoreCivic’s filing:

Mr. Horwitz’s social media posts are direct, a necessary requirement of Twitter, yet are extraordinarily vicious in their verbiage. Certain of Mr. Horwitz’s social media posts specifically mention Childress and contend that Defendants bear responsibility for his unfortunate death. Indeed, these posts call CoreCivic a “death factory” and contend that CoreCivic “kill[s]” people

The claims that Horwitz, the lawyer for the plaintiff, will magically prejudice the jury is silly, but CoreCivic makes a spirited attempt to defend this nonsense.

More than this, Mr. Horwitz’s public comments absolutely will prejudice Defendants’ ability to obtain a fair trial. They are intended for vast public consumption and specifically are directed to Mr. Horwitz’s nearly 8,000 Twitter followers and to the public at large. They have been retweeted and shared multiple times over, significantly increasing their reach. They also have been picked up by local media outlets with incredibly high volumes of readers and viewers, like Channel 4 and The Tennessean. The negative impact on Defendants and on their right to a fair trial with an impartial jury cannot be understated. And, if allowed to continue, the public comments by Mr. Horwitz only will worsen, particularly as the parties begin the written discovery and deposition phase of this lawsuit.

Yeah, maybe the reason news organizations are picking up on them is that they are newsworthy? Is CoreCivic really arguing that news organizations can’t cover a case or it will prejudice a jury? There are easy ways to deal with that during the voir dire process in determining whether or not any potential juror follows Horwitz or has seen any of these news stories.

Anyway, CoreCivic needs to learn that while it may be able to shut up the prisoners in its private prisons, outside of those prisons free speech still exists.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-slapp, daniel horwitz, free speech, marie newby, prior restraint, private prisons, public records, slapp, terry childress
Companies: corecivic

ICE’s ‘Fierce Commitment’ To Ensuring Detainees Are Cared For Properly Includes Inadequate Staffing, Unsanitary Facilities

from the inhumane dept

ICE has never really cared about the people it detains and processes for removal. It cared even less when President Trump made it clear he believed anyone less white and privileged than he is deserved to be excluded from the “American dream.”

Trump claimed he wanted the “worst of the worst” removed to make America “safer.” Then he decided he just wanted any non-white foreigners removed, stoking the flames of xenophobia by claiming people illegally in this country were more dangerous than lifelong residents, despite a mountain of evidence indicating the opposite.

ICE threw itself into its work. And it threw a bunch of people into detention facilities. Those efforts garnered it worldwide criticism and some some federal lawsuits. Internal investigations of ICE by the DHS Inspector General showed many accusations against the agency were true: ICE was cramming people into overcrowded facilities and denying them access to their rights.

These shots are from a 2020 Inspector General’s inspection of an El Paso, Texas detention facility.

It’s 2022 and there’s a new president in office. Things have not improved. An investigation [PDF] of the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, New Mexico shows ICE still believes it’s in the business of handling livestock, rather than actual human beings.

One problem? Way more detainees than government employees capable of handling them. Understaffing isn’t acceptable, especially when there are supposed national security issues on the line. ICE (and its private prison partner CoreCivic) have had plenty of time to fix this. Neither party has.

The ICE contract for Torrance requires specific staffing levels for the safety and security of detainees. At designated staffing levels the facility should have 245 full-time staff. At the time of our inspection, Torrance was at 54 percent of required staffing, with 133 full-time employees. Torrance has 112 staffing vacancies, with the majority (94 positions) in the area of security.

ICE issued a Contract Discrepancy Report in December 2020 related to medical staffing shortages, but the report also indicated that staffing issues extended beyond medical vacancies. ICE warned the facility that the Contract Discrepancy Report may be expanded to include other staffing areas that are currently showing critical shortages. [Torrance] is not at 95% staffing levels across the board and a comprehensive plan needs to be developed to meet these shortages. Nevertheless, Torrance continues to remain severely understaffed over 1 year later, requiring current staff to work a minimum of six overtime shifts per month to help bridge the gap.

ICE’s contractor can’t fill these vacancies, despite offering subsidized housing and other incentives for employees who would most likely be required to drive an hour from the nearest major city (Albuquerque). Rather than find ways to limit the facility’s intake of detainees to keep the limited staff from being further stretched, CoreCivic and ICE decided to start skimping on the necessities of life.

Torrance houses ICE detainees in 8 of their 11 housing units. We reviewed all 157 cells in the 8 housing units holding detainees and found 83 detainee cells (roughly 53 percent) with plumbing issues, including toilets and sinks that were inoperable, clogged, or continuously cycling water…

[…]

In addition, we encountered mold and water leaks throughout the facility… These issues exacerbate unsanitary conditions and can lead to slips and falls by detainees or facility staff. Further, it could also lead to health issues for both detainees and staff breathing in the mold. Work orders showed that most problems we observed during our inspection went unresolved for 12 or more days.

Then there are the security problems. Supervision is nearly nonexistent. Sight lines from control rooms to holding cells are obstructed. Blind spots are numerous. Much of the job is handed over to unmonitored cameras which can only provide evidence of something that has already happened, rather than allow staffers to address problems as they arise or head off escalations. Detainee control was also apparently achieved with the use of electronic door systems, according to ICE, an assertion that means nothing when supposedly “locked” doors were left ajar.

The Inspector General’s recommendation is harsh but fair:

We recommend the immediate relocation of all detainees from the facility unless and until the facility ensures adequate staffing and appropriate living conditions.

ICE (and, presumably CoreCivic, which gets paid more the more detainees it houses) disagrees with this recommendation. Its lengthy response contains plenty of literally incredible assertions and accusations that the DHS IG staged photos to misrepresent the condition of the facility.

As for the former (the disagreement with the assessment,) it’s par for the course for an agency that routinely fails to live up to even its own internal standards. As for the accusations the Office of the Inspector General falsified information… whoo, boy. It certainly would help ICE to be any other agency than ICE, which has been the target of plenty of confirmed abuse allegations over the years.

The response, penned by acting ICE Chief of Staff Jason Houser, opens with a literally unbelievable claim:

ICE is fiercely committed to ensuring that noncitizens residing in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments, and under appropriate conditions of confinement.

This is conclusively false. See also: this, this, this, this, this, and this.

More seriously, ICE accuses the IG of staging the photo of a detainee obtaining drinking water from a floor mop sink as part of the evidence that regular sinks are not working properly. In response to the IG noting that hot water handles are broken (and have apparently not been repaired), ICE insists hot water would have run out of the only operable taps (the cold water ones) if investigators had simply waited longer.

The draft report at p. 4 states that some faucets did not produce hot water. In fact, during the inspection ICE informed the OIG inspector that, like many faucets, the hot water takes some time to arrive in a faucet that starts cold. The inspector, however, declined to run the tap to determine if that was true.

LOL.

Please. The complaint in the OIG report refers to taps where the hot water tap handle had been broken off. No amount of running cold water would turn it hot. And the photo being complained about by ICE shows a broken handle, not a sink with two working handles no inspector could be persuaded to run until hot.

Rebuttals work better when you’re credible, ICE. Good luck talking your way out of yet another completely unsurprising report that the agency treats “noncitizens” like subhumans. ICE is an agency with an alarming tendency to go rogue. This report shows why the new administration needs to rein it in, reform it, and make it better before another leader of the free world takes the helm and starts fucking things up again.

Filed Under: detainees, el paso, ice, inhumane treatment, torrance
Companies: corecivic

from the civics-obviously-not-its-strong-suit dept

Private prison company CoreCivic has just learned a civics lesson. [I’ll show myself out.] Possibly a very expensive one.

Last March, it sued [PDF] Candide Group, an investment firm that “directs capital away from an extractive global economy towards investments dedicated to social justice and sustainability.” CoreCivic was one company Candide reps wanted money directed away from, citing its participation in separating parents from children at our nation’s borders. (But really only the Southern border if we’re honest.) Candide also claimed CoreCivic lobbies for harsher sentencing and tougher immigration laws since both of those would naturally provide more business for CoreCivic.

CoreCivic’s libel lawsuit said these two “falsehoods” were spread throughout the web via sites like Forbes and multiple social media platforms. It denied both assertions and said they were stated with a reckless disregard for the truth. Candide responded with an anti-SLAPP motion [PDF], which pointed out that not only could CoreCivic not prove the statements were false but also that it had filed its lawsuit past the one-year statute of limitations.

The motion worked. After some back and forth discussion about the merits of the arguments, the court disposed of CoreCivic’s lawsuit with a very short dismissal [PDF] in November. The order doesn’t say much but it says enough to indicate just how weak CoreCivic’s allegations were.

A multitude of issues have been tendered on defendants’ motion to dismiss and to strike the complaint for defamation. It turns out, however, that CoreCivic, Inc., did, in fact, operate detention facilities for parents separated from their children pursuant to the Border Patrol’s family separation policy. Thus, even though CoreCivic did not operate the detention facilities in which the children themselves were housed, CoreCivic did house the other half of the afflicted families or at least some of them. Therefore, the allegedly defamatory statements were true enough under the First Amendment and under California defamation law. Truth being a defense, the complaint is DISMISSED WITHOUT LEAVE TO AMEND. It is unnecessary to reach the remaining issues tendered. All other motions are DENIED AS MOOT.

Anti-SLAPP laws work. CoreCivic didn’t like being publicly criticized, especially by an entity that could shift investors’ money elsewhere. That these actions may have damaged CoreCivic’s future profitability isn’t really relevant — at least not when its allegations of libel couldn’t be sustained.

Whatever money is now leaking from CoreCivic is going to be (mildly) compounded by its inability to recognize largely truthful statements as protected speech, rather than the defamation it clearly desires them to be. The court says [PDF] Candide is entitled to collect legal fees from CoreCivic — an important facet of any good anti-SLAPP law. Candide’s legal reps are asking for about $165,000 in fees. However, the tail end of the order suggests it won’t be nearly that much.

First, defense counsel’s hourly rate is inflated way beyond the amount charged to the client. The anti-SLAPP attorney’s fee provision protects defendants from shouldering the costs of meritless litigation so fees should be limited to what actually “compensate[s] a defendant for the expense of responding to a SLAPP suit,” and not result in a bonus for attorneys.

[…]

_Second, defense counsel spent too long on the motion to strike, especially in light of the experience and expertise of the attorneys which should have allowed them to make quicker work of this matter. Especially where hourly fees are high, there is “an expectation that [counsel] will complete tasks efficiently and that its more senior attorneys will limit their involvement to tasks requiring their level of expertise._”

All anti-SLAPP motions are not created equal, but Judge William Alsup says this one is not that much more equal than others.

Other courts have determined a reasonable time expenditure for an anti-SLAPP motion to be between 40 and 75 hours, not 407.9 hours as here.

Whatever fees are eventually settled on, this case highlights the importance of having a strong anti-SLAPP law to work with. Without it, this case could have gone on for several more months and even a clear win for defendants would rarely result in fee shifting. CoreCivic sued because it didn’t like being criticized for doing things it was actually doing. A suit like this is designed to silence critics and deter others from making similar statements. If a defendant bleeds long enough, an eventual victory is ultimately meaningless. The damage has been done and the threat remains.

Filed Under: anti-slapp, border, defamation, detention centers, prisons, private prisons, separated families, slapp, statute of limitations
Companies: candide, corecivic