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Impose Steep Penalties on SLAPP Suit Plaintiffs

ACRI

On January 14, 2025, the Association for Civil Rights submitted a request to join an appeal as an "amicus curiae" (“friend of the court”) regarding a SLAPP (“Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation”) suit filed by the Bnei David Pre-Military Academy against the activist and publicist Yair Nehorai.  

 

Bnei David is a publicly funded pre-military academy. Files that the academy itself uploaded online revealed that its rabbis continually lecture against equality for women, Arabs, and LGBTQ+ community members; express tolerance for Jewish terrorism; and attack the secular public and the political left in Israel. Nehorai, like other media outlets, published these videos uploaded by Bnei David and criticized them. In response, the academy and its head filed a defamation lawsuit and a copyright infringement claim against Nehorai, while simultaneously launching a public smear campaign against him. 

  

After five years of dragging out the lawsuits and taking every measure to torment Nehorai, and just before they needed to appear in court to defend their suit, the academy suddenly requested to withdraw the lawsuits, citing the medical condition of the head of the academy - a claim that was not supported by any medical documentation. The court granted the request, did not address the claims that these were SLAPP suits, and dismissed the cases without costs. Nehorai appealed, and ACRI requested to join the proceedings as amicus curiae. 

  

In the request to join, ACRI argued that the lawsuit was a SLAPP suit, and that the court should have treated it as such and imposed significant legal costs on the academy in order to deter them from further misusing the legal system. ACRI addressed the characteristics of SLAPP suits, and the fact that imposing significant costs on plaintiffs is one of the main tools—and in many cases, the only tool—with which the courts are able to deal with these frivolous, yet destructive, lawsuits. 

  

Civil Appeal 42657-11-24 Yair Nehorai v. Bnei David Yeshiva Academy 

Attorney: Hagar Shechter 

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