Amidst an increasingly polarized social climate that often manifests on social media, the Connecticut Supreme Court recently affirmed that calling someone on Facebook a “racist” or “white supremacist” could not be the basis for a defamation action since those statements represented opinions rather than statements of fact.
The decision in Murphy v. Rosen, 351 Conn. 120 (2025), issued January 21, 2025, arose from a dispute in the comments of a 2020 Facebook post discussing the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. As the debate devolved, the defendant responded to another commenter and called the plaintiff “a troll and a white supremacist.” The plaintiff filed a defamation action against the defendant in Connecticut Superior Court.
The defendant responded by filing a special motion to dismiss pursuant to Connecticut’s anti-SLAPP statute (§ 52-196a). Under Connecticut law, a defamatory communication requires evidence that someone made a statement of fact to a third party, identified the plaintiff in the statement, and that the plaintiff suffered reputational harm as a result. See Systems, Inc. v. Gartner, Inc., 334 Conn. 396, 410 (2020). If the statement is made on a matter of public concern and based on the exercise of the constitutional freedoms of speech, petition, or association, then the party that made the statement may file an expedited motion to dismiss the action under the anti-SLAPP law.
The Court’s opinion in Murphy centered on whether the term “white supremacist” conveys a statement of fact or a nonactionable opinion. If the party making the statement successfully demonstrates that the statement was an opinion, the plaintiff cannot prevail on a defamation claim. See id. at 408, 430–31.
When considering whether a statement is a fact or an opinion, the Court looks to whether a statement purports to be a fact about something that is or was in existence or happening and whether it is capable of being known. An opinion, on the other hand, “is a personal comment about another’s conduct, qualifications or character that has some basis in fact.” See Murphy, 351 Conn. at 132 (citing NetScout, 334 Conn. at 417). The Court acknowledged in its decision that this analysis “cannot be made in a vacuum.” Id. at 133.
The plaintiff in Murphy argued that the term “white supremacist” by itself “always implies the existence of undisclosed defamatory facts…” Id. at 129. The Court disagreed, referencing the fact that there is no commonly agreed-upon meaning to the term itself—in fact, even the plaintiff and defendant disagreed on what the term meant. Id. at 135-38.
The Court ultimately decided that the term “white supremacist” was a statement of opinion rather than fact. In support of this decision, it referenced cases in several states, including Delaware, New Jersey, and New Hampshire, that reached the same conclusion. Three years ago, in ultimately holding that statements calling the plaintiff’s actions “shockingly racist” were opinion and not fact, the Delaware Supreme Court reflected that “[i]t cannot be denied [that the United States] is in the midst of an ongoing national debate about what it means to be racist. . . It is not [the Court’s] to enter into this debate and decide who is right and who is wrong.” Cousins v. Goodier, 283 A.3d 1140, 1157–58 (Del. 2022).
Similarly, last year, the Supreme Court of New Hampshire tackled a similar issue in Richards v. Union Leader Corp., 176 N.H. 789, 324 A.3d 908 (2024). In that case, an individual submitted—and the newspaper published—an opinion piece accusing several individuals, including the plaintiff, of being racist in providing public testimony in support of a bill restricting DEI and anti-racism efforts in schools. In deciding that the statements made in the op-ed were not defamatory, the Court referenced U.S. Supreme Court precedent that “in public debate we must tolerate insulting, and even outrageous, speech in order to provide adequate ‘breathing space’ to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.” Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 452 (2011).
Despite Murphy’s holding that ideological labels were not defamatory, the Connecticut Court did theorize that if a person made a statement falsely linking someone to a hate group, rather than just linking to a “general sociopolitical viewpoint,” then that would be factually different and could potentially lead to a defamation action. Murphy, at 141, n.12.
Read the full opinion on Murphy v. Rosen.
