California Supreme Court upholds farmer’s First Amendment victory
On August 19, 2026, the California Supreme Court put a stop to a government agency’s repeated efforts to shut down a citizen’s lawsuit against it.
Spencer Defty is a small agricultural business owner in California. Like many other Americans, he has become the victim of widespread government overreach. In early 2024, Mr. Defty had an unwelcome surprise—the Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District issued several Notices of Violation against him for his agricultural work, even though the agricultural activities he participated in were clearly exempt from the regulations the District was enforcing.
In discussions with the District, Mr. Defty discovered that the District was applying an unofficial policy against him that effectively repealed the exemptions. This policy limited exemptions to work done “on the farm, by the farmer.” The District reasoned that the exemptions Mr. Defty relied upon did not apply to his agricultural work done on a contract basis. The District then brought a lawsuit against Mr. Defty to enforce the Notices of Violation.
Once Mr. Defty learned that the District was filing its lawsuit based on an unofficial policy against him, he filed a countersuit against the District. He asked that the court declare the unofficial policy invalid, because it was not formally authorized and he had no notice of the policy prior to his discussions with the District.
But the District didn’t respond to Mr. Defty’s suit on the merits. Instead, it invoked California’s anti-SLAPP statute to shut down his case before it even began.
Anti-SLAPP statutes are ordinarily designed to advance the First Amendment rights of citizens who might otherwise face retaliatory lawsuits aimed at suppressing speech. But in this case, the District threatened to turn the anti-SLAPP statute on its head, weaponizing it against a citizen exercising his right to petition. The District argued that the statute could be used to prevent Mr. Defty from bringing good-faith claims against it—reasoning that fundamentally undermined the First Amendment protections the anti-SLAPP statute sought to protect.
Pacific Legal Foundation filed an amicus brief and participated in oral argument, arguing that California’s anti-SLAPP statute cannot be applied to government entities at the expense of citizens’ First Amendment rights. The California’s Third District Court of Appeals clarified that Mr. Defty was challenging government action, which is not protected under the anti-SLAPP statute.
Unsatisfied with this decision, the District moved for reconsideration of the decision in the Court of Appeals. But the District didn’t stop there—it also petitioned the California Supreme Court for review and asked it to depublish the lower court decision. If the Court had granted this request to depublish, the Court of Appeals’ decision would apply only to Mr. Defty’s case and could not be used as precedent in other lawsuits. This would have prevented any future cases from citing the decision to defend Californians’ First Amendment rights against government abuse.
But the First Amendment prevailed. The California Supreme Court let the Court of Appeals decision stand and denied the District’s request for depublication, putting an end to the District’s repeated attempts to shut down Mr. Defty’s lawsuit.
Mr. Defty’s success is a win for all Californians. Because he was willing to challenge the District’s abuse, his lawsuit will prevent the government from abusing California’s anti-SLAPP statute in the future. Other Californians can now hold the government accountable for its enforcement actions without fear that they will be silenced under a law designed to protect their First Amendment rights.
