An aerial photo shows a Google data center on July 24, 2025, in Henderson, Nev.
Photo: Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Two wealthy lawfare
warriors recently failed in their attempts to bury reporting on government-released documents. Both lawsuits — one in state court in California, the other in federal court in Arkansas — were frivolous strategic lawsuits against public participation, known as SLAPPs. Supreme Court
precedent
couldn’t be clearer that it’s not the journalists’ problem if the government accidentally shares information it’s not supposed to disclose.
But only the California SLAPP victim had any real recourse against the censorial bully who wanted to shut him up — not because that case was any more frivolous than the Arkansas one, but because of the court in which it was filed.
Let’s start with the Arkansas case. Jessica Kivell — a mom, healthcare worker, and concerned citizen — sought to find out who was paying for a data center project in West Memphis. She filed public records requests with the Arkansas Public Service Commission and received documents indicating Google would cover only one-third of the cost of a new solar plant to power the facility, contradicting its promises that ratepayers would not be on the hook. Kivell shared the documents with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which
reported
on them.
Entergy Arkansas, the utility set to build the solar facility,
sued
Kivell, the Democrat-Gazette, its reporter, and the Arkansas Times, which
said
it never even had the records. It claimed the commission erred by releasing the records to Kivell, that they contained trade secrets (sidenote: baselessly invoking the need to protect trade secrets to duck public records laws is also a serious
problem
), that she and the press should be restrained from discussing them, and the Democrat-Gazette should have to take down what it had already reported. Entergy also
disputed
the Democrat-G
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