High School Football Coach Isn't a "Public Official" or "Public Figure" For Libel Law Purposes,

even when he "adopted a controversial 'no punt' strategy."

From Cruce v. Berkeley County School Dist., decided Wednesday by the South Carolina Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Hill:

Petitioner Jeffrey L. Cruce became the head football coach and athletic director for Berkeley High School in 2011. For the 2015 season, he adopted a controversial "no punt" offensive scheme for the football team. This strategy stirred intense debate among followers of the team and was covered in local and even national sports pages. The controversy deepened as the team suffered lopsided defeats. In December 2015, the Deputy Superintendent of the Berkeley County School District (the District) sent Cruce a letter advising him he was being relieved as coach and athletic director and reassigned to a position as a middle school guidance counselor because he had failed to meet certain performance goals….

On January 7, 2016, Berkeley High athletic trainer Chris Stevens sent an email to forty-five people, including administrators, athletic department employees, and volunteer coaches, questioning the integrity and completeness of student athlete files Cruce had maintained. In the email, Stevens remarked the filing issues were a potential "liability" to the District….

Cruce sued and was awarded $200K in actual damages; the District appealed, and the S.C. intermediate appellate court concluded that "Cruce was a public official for purposes of defamation law and the District was therefore entitled to immunity because § 15-78-60(17) of the South Carolina Tort Claims Act (2005) (SCTCA) immunizes the District from losses caused by employee conduct amounting to 'actual malice.'" (If Cruce were a public official, then First Amendment libel law would bar him from recovering in the absence of "actual malice," and South Carolina government tort immunity law would bar him from recovering from the government if "actual malice" was shown.) No, said the S.C. supreme court:

The precedent dealing with the definition of "public official" is imprecise, but "it cannot be thought to include all public employees." The lead decision on the issue holds that the public official category applies "at the very least to those among the hierarchy of government employees who have, or appear to the public to have, substantial responsibility for or control over the conduct of government affairs." To qualify as a public official, the plaintiff must occupy a position that "would invite public scrutiny and discussion of the person holding it, entirely apart from the scrutiny and discussion occasioned by the particular charges in the controversy." Put another way, the position must be one that attracts public scrutiny above and beyond that of the rank and file government job, such that "the public has an independent interest in the qualifications and performance of the person" holding the position.

In deciding whether someone is a public official in the defamation context, it is helpful to keep in mind the reason behind the classification: to apply the actual malice standard only where society's strong interest in free and open public debate about public issues outweighs the individual's important interest in protecting his reputation. The right to protect one's reputation, a vital strand of our national history, "reflects no more than our basic concept of the essential dignity and worth of every human being–a concept at the root of any decent system of ordered liberty." …

We understand Cruce was a public employee and enjoyed media attention akin to that of many sports figures. But that does not transform him into a public official, a classification that would strip him of his right to protect his name from being defamed to the same extent as a private citizen. No matter how intense the public gaze may be upon sports figures, they do not have any official influence or decision-making authority about serious issues of public policy or core government functions, such as defense, public health and safety, budgeting, infrastructure, taxation, or law and order. It is these public issues and functions that the First Amendment recognizes as so essential to democracy that public debate about them and their policymakers should be unchecked, except where the speech is knowingly false or uttered with reckless disregard of its truth or falsity, i.e. the "actual malice" standard of New York Times v. Sullivan.

As New York Times v. Sullivan explained, the actual malice rule protects "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open." Fielding a football team or devising an offensive strategy is not the type of public issue envisioned by the Framers of the First Amendment. Baseball may be the national pastime, but it and other sports are just that: pastimes. They are not forums for civic concerns, and sports figures—regardless of how far and wide their fame may spread—are not public officials….

[Nor is Cruce a] public figure…. Curtis Pub. Co. v. Butts (1967) … held that the head football coach at the University of Georgia (who was privately paid and not a public employee) was a "public figure" in a defamation case involving allegations of bribery. Cruce could not be an all-purpose "public figure" as that term of art from Butts was later clarified as limited to those who "have assumed roles of especial prominence in the affairs of society … [or] occupy positions of such persuasive power and influence that they are deemed public figures for all purposes." Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974). Nor is he that unicorn of defamation law, the "involuntary public figure," a species Gertz described as "exceedingly rare," and some now believe to be extinct….

[Nor is here] a limited public figure, … one who "voluntarily injects himself or is drawn into a particular controversy and thereby becomes a public figure for a limited range of issues." The rationale for requiring limited public figures to prove actual malice is that such persons have not only assumed the risk by voluntarily entering the forefront of a public controversy where it is essential that speech be unbridled, but they also have superior access to media outlets to defend themselves and express counter speech….

We believe a [good] test for determining whether one is a limited public figure considers three things: (1) whether the plaintiff voluntarily injected herself into and played a prominent role in a public controversy, defined as a controversy whose resolution affects a substantial segment of the public; (2) whether the defamation occurred after the plaintiff voluntarily entered the controversy but while still embroiled in it; and (3) whether the defamation was related to the controversy….

We conclude Cruce is not a limited public figure under this test …. First, no public controversy was present. The merit of Cruce's coaching strategy was not a controversy that affected large segments of society. Second, even if a public controversy existed over Cruce's coaching strategy, Stevens' defamatory comments related to Cruce's paperwork skills, not his gridiron acumen….

We therefore reinstate the jury's damages award.

There's more (which you can read about here), but to keep the post manageable I decided to focus here just on the public official/public figure question.

Lucy Clark Sanders and Nancy Bloodgood (Bloodgood & Sanders, LLC) represent plaintiff.