Not too long ago, the Wausau Pilot & Review was fighting for its life. The small nonprofit news outlet was a defendant in a defamation lawsuit and facing $200,000 in legal bills. Cory Tomczyk, a businessman who in 2023 became a Republican state lawmaker from Mosinee, was suing the paper for reporting that he had uttered a homophobic slur during a 2021 Marathon County board meeting, something he denied.

Wisconsin, unlike at least 30 other states, does not have a law protecting journalists, activists or the general public from lawsuits designed to silence critics, but the Wausau Pilot case piqued interest in getting something on the books. In August 2023, former Sen. Melissa Agard and former state Rep. Jimmy Anderson, both Democrats, introduced “anti-SLAPP” legislation, which stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation.

“SLAPP lawsuits are a weapon used by the powerful and well-connected in an attempt to intimidate or censor critics, activists, journalists and others with a stifling financial burden,” Agard, who is now Dane County executive, said in a news release at the time. “It is shameful that my Republican colleague, state Sen. Cory Tomczyk, has chosen to rely on this strategy in order to silence a local newspaper that reported his homophobic and inappropriate actions.”

That legislation, co-authored by Democrats, did not advance in the Republican-controlled Legislature, nor did Democratic bills introduced this fall in the Senate by Sen. Kelda Roys and in the Assembly by Rep. Christian Phelps.

But substantially similar legislation — AB 701 and SB 666 — co-authored by Republicans, has received a much warmer reception. Both the Assembly Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety unanimously recommended approval of this legislation in mid-January.

Chief sponsor Rep. Jim Piwowarczyk of Hubertus said at a Jan. 7 public hearing before the Assembly Committee on the Judiciary that the aim of his bill, which is based on model legislation developed by the nonprofit Uniform Law Commission, is to “strengthen protections for free speech and civic participation.”

At its core, he added, “this bill is about safeguarding First Amendment rights by ensuring that citizens are not silenced through abusive litigation for speaking on matters of public concern.”

The bill sets forth a process for an expedited court review of lawsuits that appear to target protected speech or communications related to government proceedings, among other things. It would also allow the prevailing party to recover attorney fees.

Jessica McBride, a journalism instructor at UW-Milwaukee and contributor to Wisconsin Right Now, which Piwowarczyk helped co-found, testified at the same public hearing that she has fielded calls from lawyers threatening to sue students of hers who were working on investigative stories. And she acknowledged the elephant in the room.

“I think that a lot of people on the right are not fans of the free press,” she said, with a bit of a chuckle. “I am. I believe it’s extraordinarily important.

“I think the free press is the most important safeguard we have against tyranny,” McBride added. “We can see that going on all over the globe.”

James D. Rogers, government affairs director for Wisconsin Association for Justice, requested that lawmakers amend the bill to clarify the types of claims that the bill would cover and require judges to make a separate determination regarding the recovery of legal fees, as opposed to this being automatic. “Judicial discretion over the imposition of costs and fees is crucial to maintaining the normal and proper functioning of the American legal system,” he said.

Both the Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Sen. Eric Wimberger of De Pere, and the Assembly bill, passed in committee unamended.

I reached out to both Wimberger’s and Piwowarczyk’s office but was unable to get any information on whether AB 701 and SB 666 would likely get a floor vote in their respective bodies before the Legislature adjourns in mid-March.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin backs the legislation, as does the Wisconsin Newspaper Association and Wisconsin Broadcasters Association. In testimony before the Assembly justice committee, Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (and an Isthmus contributor), stressed that the legislation protects not just media professionals and outlets, but ordinary citizens “from lawsuits that are intended to shut them up.”

“No one should have to worry that something they say in good faith can result in their being sued by someone who doesn’t want to hear it.”

The lawsuit filed by Tomczyk against the Wausau Pilot & Review was dismissed in April 2023 by Marathon County Circuit Court Judge Scott Corbett, who found that Tomczyk was a public figure and that the news outlet had not acted with “malice” in its reporting — the current standard for defaming public figures.

Tomcyzk appealed Corbett’s decision, but the Court of Appeals dismissed his lawsuit in September 2024, writing, “Tomczyk, a limited purpose public figure, has not presented evidence by which a reasonable jury could conclude that Wausau Pilot harbored serious doubts about the truth of the publications such that it acted with actual malice in publishing them.”

While the news outlet’s legal ordeal is over, the collateral damage continues, says Shereen Siewert, its founder and publisher.

“It feels like we are still reeling from it,” she says in an interview. “I still speak with donors who are afraid to publicly support us because of that. They are afraid of backlash. They are afraid of looking like they are supporting a liberal organization.”

One supporter, says Siewert, wanted to donate $50,000 but would do so only anonymously. Siewert had to turn the donation down because the amount exceeds the news outlet’s cap on anonymous donations.

“So it’s going to be a long time before we get out from under what happened,” she adds. “It has led to this continued labeling of us as a liberal organization even though we are nonpartisan.”

Of the two GOP-backed versions of the bill currently on the table, Siewert prefers the Assembly bill because it allows for early dismissal of meritless cases before attorneys are allowed to pursue the discovery of evidence, a costly endeavor if allowed to begin. If this proposed law had been in place before Tomczyk filed his lawsuit, says Siewert, “that would have been a huge game changer for us.”