Rancho Publications v. Superior Court

The right to speak anonymously draws its strength from two separate constitutional wellsprings: the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and the right of privacy in article I, section 1 of the California Constitution. The anonymous pamphleteer is one of the enduring images of the American revolutionary heritage.

Publius, Cato and Brutus find their modern-day counterparts in “Save Our Hospital,” a group which paid to run numerous advertisements in a local newspaper criticizing a local community hospital. The hospital used a preexisting civil lawsuit to find out who authored them. The reason? It suspected the same people previously distributed other anonymous documents of an allegedly defamatory nature.

We draw upon a well-established body of California case law which allows nonparties to civil litigation (such as a newspaper) to assert the constitutionally protected rights of an author to remain unknown. Applying a balancing test, we issue a writ because the speculative relationship between this anonymous speech and other statements which are alleged to be defamatory does not justify judicially compelled disclosure by a third party. Anonymity, once lost, cannot be…