Professor Enrique Armijo spoke with journalist Tiffany Hsu for a report on the ongoing lawsuits against media organizations and personalities accused of defaming Dominion Voting Systems.
An Elon Law scholar of the First Amendment was a featured expert in a recent New York Times report on Dominion Voting Systems and its $787.5 million settlement agreement with FOX News.
Professor Enrique Armijo spoke with reporter Tiffany Hsu about Dominion’s ongoing legal efforts to defend its reputation from media outlets and personalities who are accused of defaming the company following the 2020 presidential election.
Armijo reflected on the benefit to Dominion of accepting one of the largest defamation settlement payouts in American history.
From “What’s Next for Dominion After Its $787.5 Million Settlement With Fox News?” on April 19, 2023:
Legal experts noted that even if Dominion had prevailed in a jury verdict, it would have risked years of expensive battles over appeals from Fox.
“The tort of defamation is not about saving democracy from liars,” said Enrique Armijo, a professor and First Amendment expert at Elon University School of Law. “It’s about saving the reputation of the people who have been lied about and making those liars compensate them for the harms to their reputations.”
Armijo is a Fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics, and an Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life.
He teaches and researches in the areas of the First Amendment, constitutional law, torts, administrative law, media and internet law, and international freedom of expression. His scholarship addresses the interaction between new technologies and free speech.
Armijo has been cited in recent months by national media covering Dominion’s lawsuit against FOX News, as well as news coverage of the libel lawsuit brought against Infowars founder Alex Jones by the parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.