The Damage Report
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California Lawmakers Drop STUNNING Legal News After Heinous MeToo Fallout
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October 2, 2023
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5:44Now PlayingCalifornia lawmakers push through a monumental bill to have Governor Gavin Newsom sign, which would install protections for sexual assault survivors being legally attacked by their assailants following the rise of the MeToo movement. Rayyvana and Brett Erlich break it down on The Damage Report.
Read more here:
California Bill Aims to Protect Sexual Assault Survivors From Getting Sued by Their Assailants
"Pamela Lopez, a California-based lobbyist, joined numerous women working in state politics to speak out against the prevalence of sexual harassment in their line of work at the onset of the MeToo movement. In 2017, she testified before the legislature that she’d been assaulted by a state lawmaker the year before, and was pressed to reveal his name—a demand that would ultimately spark an avalanche of legal action against her. Lopez named her assailant, former Assemblymember Matt Dababneh, which was protected speech. But she was sued by Dababneh for then speaking about the alleged assault at a subsequent press conference. A court initially ruled that her remarks during the press release were not protected speech in 2018, but a federal appeals court ruled in her favor in 2021.
Over the last several years, Jessica Stender, policy director at the gender justice nonprofit Equal Rights Advocates (ERA), has worked extensively with survivors who’ve faced defamation suits from their assailants for speaking up about being assaulted in cases similar to Lopez’s. To Stender, Lopez is one of many women and survivors who were more or less hung out to dry in a post-MeToo world—one that “encouraged people to speak out” about sexual misconduct but didn’t offer them any legal protections (or at the very least, advice) for doing so."
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