Background
Sharon Schram worked at Dow Corning and sued the company in federal court for employment-related claims including sex discrimination, FMLA retaliation, disability discrimination, and retaliation under Michigan’s worker’s compensation act. Christian Velasquez, a Dow Corning manager who was several levels above Schram and testified as a witness in the federal lawsuit, was not named as a defendant. The federal district court denied Dow Corning’s summary judgment motion on most claims, and the parties settled in February 2018 with a confidentiality agreement prohibiting public discussion of the settlement terms or case merits.
In 2022, Velasquez ran for Michigan State Senate. His primary opponent, Rep. Annette Glenn, distributed a mailer quoting extensive excerpts from the federal court’s opinion denying summary judgment. The excerpts highlighted findings about gender discrimination and Velasquez’s alleged role in the adverse employment actions. Velasquez responded with multiple statements characterizing Glenn’s mailer as “misleading and untrue,” containing only “half the facts,” and constituting “mudslinging.” He emphasized that he was merely a witness, not a defendant, and highlighted his record of hiring and promoting women during his 29 years at Dow Corning.
Schram sued Velasquez and his campaign committee for defamation and false-light invasion of privacy, arguing that his statements implied her federal lawsuit was without merit and that she was dishonest. The trial court granted summary disposition to Velasquez, and Schram appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal, holding that Schram failed to establish actionable defamation or false-light invasion of privacy claims. The court found that most of Velasquez’s statements were not reasonably understood to refer to Schram at all; rather, they targeted Glenn’s campaign tactics. Many statements constituted protected political hyperbole—such as “mudslinging” and “half-cocked”—which are common in political discourse and not to be taken literally. Other statements were either factually true (that Velasquez was not a defendant, that no judgment was entered against him, that the case settled) or opinions about whether Glenn’s mailer was misleading, which cannot be proven true or false.
For the two statements that came closest to implying falsehood about Schram’s lawsuit—that Glenn’s mailer was “an untruth” and “misleading and untrue”—the court held that Velasquez enjoyed a qualified privilege to respond to the Glenn campaign’s public attacks. Because the Glenn campaign had made workplace discrimination treatment a matter of public concern by featuring the federal court opinion in campaign materials, Velasquez had the right to tell his side of the story. Even assuming the qualified privilege applied, Velasquez acted in good faith and without actual malice; he had legitimate grounds to dispute that the federal court excerpt, pulled from a 39-page opinion spanning four claims, fairly represented the full record.
Key Takeaways
- In political campaigns, statements that are opinions, hyperbole, or rhetorical in nature receive First Amendment protection and are not actionable as defamation.
- Factually true statements—even if they could theoretically imply something false—do not constitute defamation.
- A qualified privilege exists for a defendant in public disputes to respond to attacks made about them and present their side of the story.
- A social media “like” of a statement does not constitute republication or adoption of that statement.
- Selective presentation of court documents in campaign materials does not automatically render responsive statements defamatory if those responses are not false facts stated with actual malice.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the substantial protection afforded to political speech under the First Amendment, even when that speech concerns a private citizen whose employment lawsuit became public through an opponent’s campaign tactics. The court’s analysis demonstrates that personal grievances arising from litigation do not necessarily translate into actionable legal claims once they enter the political arena. When campaign opponents publicize court opinions to make character arguments, the targeted candidate has broad latitude to respond—characterizing such materials as misleading, incomplete, or unfair—without fear of defamation liability.
The ruling also clarifies that defamation by implication requires more than showing that statements lack context or that a reasonable reader might infer something unflattering; the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable reader would understand the statement to assert a false fact about them. Schram’s inability to break the confidentiality agreement that bound her own settlement—and thus her inability to fully counter Velasquez’s version of events publicly—did not create a defamation claim; it simply meant her side of the story remained largely untold. The court’s message: the remedy for misleading campaign speech is more speech, not defamation liability.