LR5 school board member’s lawsuit shuts down critical Facebook group
For the second time in a week, a Lexington-Richland 5 school board member has sued one of his online critics.
Ken Loveless filed suit in Richland County on Wednesday against Leslie Stiles, a resident of the school district who is an administrator of a Facebook group for LR5 parents where critical comments about Loveless and other school board parents are often made.
Stiles is the administrator of Deep Dive into D5 on Facebook.
“On multiple occasions, Stiles has published, approved, and endorsed posts to the Page that contain false and defamatory statements about Loveless, which defame him, harm him and his reputation, and subject him to humiliation and ridicule,” Loveless’ lawsuit claims.
Loveless did not immediately return calls seeking comment from The State on Thursday. Stiles declined to comment on the suit.
Besides online comments made by Stiles herself, the lawsuit says Stiles also bears legal responsibility for comments made by others in the group she oversees.
“(A)s administrator of the Deep Dive Into D5 page, she has full control and authority to monitor the posts made to the page and on information and belief she has the unfettered discretion, power, and authority to delete posts from the Page, delete comments and posts made to the Page, and to remove and ban people from the Page,” the lawsuit says. “As a result, posts made to the Page by others appear on the page with the express approval and endorsement of Stiles.”
The lawsuit quotes several comments made in the group by people other than Stiles, including several comments attributed to Kevin Scully, another constituent who was sued by Loveless on Monday for allegedly defamatory remarks about the school board vice chairman. Those include comments that “Crooked Ken is an unethical hypocrite and a liar,” and “Wow, he is a loser,” according to the lawsuit.
Of the comments in the lawsuit attributed to Stiles herself, many revolve around ethics complaints about Loveless’ relationship with a construction firm that formerly worked on a new elementary school in the district. Loveless’ contracting company worked with Contract Construction on a project outside the district, at the same time Contract was building the new Piney Woods Elementary School, a project that Loveless often criticized.
Other school board members criticized Loveless at the time for having a conflict of interest. Loveless ultimately recused himself from any votes on Piney Woods last year, and the S.C. Ethics Commission issued an advisory opinion that Loveless could not visit the elementary school site or review documents related to the project.
“Mr. Loveless had an EC (Ethics Commission) opinion requiring his recusal from certain matters and he refused for a length of time,” one comment attributed to Stiles in the lawsuit reads. “This SEC (State Ethics Commission) Ethics Opinion . . . further states that Mr. Loveless may not in anyway attempt to use his position to influence decisions. Has Trustee Loveless complied with these requirements? Sadly, he has not.”
Oddly, one of the allegedly libelous comments cited in the lawsuit is a correction to a previous comment. ““My apologies to Mr. Ken Loveless,” it says. “I didn’t know he was a reader but am happy to make a correction to a comment I made in error stating there was an opinion regarding him and I meant an Ethics Commission. . . opinion that he should recuse himself from certain discussion and voting.”
While traditional publishers such as newspapers are held legally responsible for the accuracy of the content they produce, the law is vague on what responsibility the relatively new category of Facebook administrators — ordinary people who use the popular platform to set up a forum for open discussion by other users — have over the content of their groups.
Besides the two lawsuits filed individually by Loveless this week, the school board collectively is also suing a former superintendent who complained to the district’s accrediting agency about its process for hiring a new superintendent. In the past year, the board has also voted on two censure motions supported by Loveless against school board members, one of whom called it an attempt to bully independent board members.
In the first vote, the board voted 4-2 to censure former board member Ed White for revealing closed-door discussions that led to the resignation of Christina Melton, whom White claims was bullied out of the job by Loveless and others. In the second vote, the majority of the board voted against censuring Rebecca Blackburn Hines for writing a letter to the state superintendent of education using school board letterhead.
It is difficult for elected officials like Loveless to sue for libel, as court precedent requires that a public figure prove statements about them were false and made with “actual malice” — or that they are not only false but that a critic knew or should have known they were false at the time but made the statement anyway.
But that hasn’t stopped some public officials in recent years from taking legal action against their critics in what are known as SLAPPs — strategic lawsuits against public participation.
“While most SLAPPs are legally meritless, they can effectively achieve their principal purpose: to chill public debate on specific issues,” according to the website of the California Anti-SLAPP Project, a group that works to combat suits stemming from online comments. “Defending a SLAPP requires substantial money, time, and legal resources, and thus diverts the defendant’s attention away from the public issue. Equally important, however, a SLAPP also sends a message to others: you, too, can be sued if you speak up.”
If that’s the goal of the latest lawsuit, it may have already had an effect. As of Thursday, a banner at the top of the Deep Dive Facebook group announced that posting and commenting had been paused until the end of April.
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 12:06 PM.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect the LR5 school board vote to censure board member Ed White. A previous version had an incorrect vote total.
.jpg)