Robert Lafayette recently sued a Vermont Newspaper because it did not provide sufficient coverage of his son's high school basketball exploits. Unfortunately for Mr. Lafayette, he ultimately got dunked on by the Court.
Mr. Layfayette's son Jack plays for People's Academy, a school located in Lamoille County. Jack, according to his father's complaint, is "one of Vermont's top-performing high school basketball players." (Just to fact check, I looked online. He's a 6'2 shooting guard who averaged 26 points and 5 assists per game last year). In 2018, the Burlington Free Press created and marketed Vermont Varsity Insider as platform to cover high school sports throughout Vermont. According to the complaint, despite its claims of statewide coverage, Vermont Varsity Insider focuses on Chittenden County schools, many of which have advertising or other commercial relationships with defendants. While Varsity Insider reports scores from other schools when available, it contains no detailed analyses of games or individual players outside of Chittendon County. Although Jack had multiple 30-point games during the 2024-2025 season, Varsity Insider did not report on those games, despite Mr. Layfayette's repeated complaints. According to Mr. Layfayette's complaint, the lack of coverage has hurt Jack's college prospects and caused Mr. Layfayette anxiety and stress, leading to uncontrollable vomiting, severe gastrointestinal distress, and panic attacks requiring benzodiazepine treatment.
The Free Press moved to dismiss the complaint and to strike the complaint under Vermont’s anti-SLAPP statute. The Free Press argued that all of Mr. Layfayette's claims were barred by Article 13 of the Vermont Constitution and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, that a special motion to strike was warranted under the anti-SLAPP statute, and that the court should issue an order to show cause to address whether plaintiff should be sanctioned for including fictitious case citations and quotations in his filings.
The Vermont Court granted the motion to dismiss, noting that the Vermont and U.S. Constitutions protect editorial decisions concerning "[t]he choice of material to go into a newspaper." As the Court ruled, "[Layfayette's] complaint expressly seeks to punish defendants for their reporting and editorial decisions. Although plaintiff casts his claims as being centered on defendants’ allegedly false and misleading marketing claims of providing 'statewide' or 'Vermont-wide' coverage, the complaint makes clear that defendants did in fact report on games throughout Vermont, but did not do so to [Layfayette's] satisfaction." And that is just not actionable conduct.
The Court also granted the motion to strike under Vermont's "anti-SLAPP" statute. That statute prevents "strategic lawsuits against public participation." Under the statute, where the plaintiff's civil action arises from a defendant's exercise its right of freedom of speech in connection with a public issue, the court must strike the complaint unless "the defendant's exercise of his or her right to freedom of speech and to petition was devoid of any reasonable factual support and any arguable basis in law; and the defendant’s acts caused actual injury to the plaintiff."
The Court first concluded that high school sports is a public issue, "insofar as high school sports is topic of interest to at least some segment of the general public and not just the players, coaches, and parents who are directly involved in any specific game or program." The Court also found that Varsity Insider did what it promised – report on high school sports statewide. Thus, its exercise of its rights was not "devoid of any reasonable factual support and any arguable basis in law." Mr. Layfayette could not overcome the anti-SLAPP protection.
But the case is not over. The Court scheduled a hearing to determine how much Mr. Layfayette will have to pay in attorney's fees and costs. Oh, and Mr. Layfayette may also be on the hook for using fictious case citations and quotes in his case filings. Yikes.
Aside from the utter fiasco of the legal proceedings, I can't help but wonder how many college coaches are going to recruit a kid whose father has a propensity to litigate. 26 points a game may not be worth the hassle.
