Brown

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS BELOW

A. Brown’s Lawsuit Against Defendants In her first amended complaint (the FAC), Brown alleged she had “reported to [individual defendants] that she had discovered facts indicating that [individual defendants] were mishandling the City’s finances, including an improper payment of nearly [$100,000] to a City [c]ontractor,” and “improperly fail[ing] to accurately report to the public the true financial health of the City.” She alleged that, as a result of her reporting these concerns, defendants took various adverse actions against her, including reducing her duties and authority as treasurer, reducing her salary by 83 percent, taking away her seat at the council meetings, and temporarily locking her and her staff out of their offices. Brown further alleged that, at a council meeting, one of the individual defendants, Mayor Butts, offered a “defamatory pretextual reason for taking away [Brown’s] duties and reducing her salary,” namely that she “[did] not know the procedure for handling bad debts, [and that] he had no choice but to reduce her duties and her salary.”

B. Defendants’ Anti-SLAPP Motion and Related Evidence Defendants filed a motion to…