LOS ANGELES – The United States Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit has affirmed the Southern District of New York’s dismissal of a $4.8 billion defamation lawsuit filed in October 2023 by Louis Farrakhan and Nation of Islam (“NOI”) against the Simon Wiesenthal Center (“SWC”) and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, SWC's Associate Dean & Global Social Action Director (together the “SWC Defendants”), as well as the Anti-Defamation League and its CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Farrakhan and NOI claimed that the SWC Defendants were defaming them because the SWC Defendants repeatedly called their comments antisemitic.    

The appellate court noted that Plaintiffs’ “sprawling allegations” in the 150-page Complaint,  with respect to the SWC Defendants, boil down to defamation claims arising from the SWC Defendants’ references to plaintiffs as antisemitic. The SWC Defendants countered that they have a constitutional right to express their opinion about what they believe is antisemitic hate speech, stating in their brief that “Plaintiffs seek here to rewrite decades of legal precedent and overturn the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.”  The Court of Appeals upheld the Southern District Court’s dismissal of the claims, confirming that the SWC Defendants’ comments calling Farrakhan and NOI antisemitic were non-actionable opinion statements that were protected by the United States Constitution and New York law. 

The SWC Defendants attorney, Julie Gerchik of Glaser Weil Fink Howard Jordan & Shapiro LLP, said, “This ruling not only affirms the right to call out antisemitic statements, but hate speech of all kind. Our firm is proud to have represented the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Rabbi Cooper in this important case, and I thank Patty Glaser in particular for her unwavering support.”   

For further information, please email Michael Sitrick mike_sitrick@sitrick.com; Terry Fahn terry_fahn@sitrick.com; Yael barTur ybartur@sitrick.com. 

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an international Jewish human rights organization. It holds consultative status at the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the OAS, and the Latin American Parliament (PARLATINO).