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Ligonier Ministries lawsuit seeks to block blogger
First Amendment advocates decry ‘prior restraint.’
SANFORD — How much First Amendment protection do bloggers have? That’s an issue now before a Sanford judge.
Ligonier Ministries Inc., a Lake Mary religious publisher and broadcaster, is asking Circuit Judge Debra S. Nelson to stop blogger Frank Vance from posting any more slurs about its president, Timothy A. Dick.
In the past five months, Vance’s blog has described Dick as part of a “family of nincompoops,” “a very corrupt man” and “a lying, thieving con artist,” according to the lawsuit.
Two weeks ago, Dick and the ministry sued Vance for defamation, asking for unspecified monetary damages.
It also asked for something that judges have historically refused to impose on news organizations — a publishing ban.
Media lawyers call that “prior restraint.”
“It’s just so repugnant to the First Amendment that you would request one,” said Marc Randazza, a First Amendment lawyer in Altamonte Springs.
Courts have long held that plaintiffs should seek justice only after an item has been published or aired. But judges have been less certain about how to handle bloggers and other material on the Internet.
There are tens of millions of blogs on the Internet. Increasingly, bloggers are being sued — for defamation, privacy issues and the use of unnamed sources, according to lawyers specializing in Internet issues.
In a very small number of cases, judges are slapping them and other Web sites with prior-restraint orders.
In May, a federal judge in Roanoke, Va., ordered the shutdown of a Web site critical of a nearby military school after the site’s creators, the parents of a boy who had been expelled, criticized the academy.
And earlier this year, a Wisconsin judge temporarily closed an Internet chat room that had been sued by a county official angry about comments posted there by anonymous writers.
First Amendment advocates say those judges were wrong. Bloggers and Web-site operators are entitled to the same protections as other media, said Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco,
Greg Herbert, a First Amendment lawyer in Orlando, said, “I think a lot of judges don’t know what a blog is.”
Ligonier, which filed the Sanford case, is a nonprofit, interdenominational group with offices in a business park. The company employs about 50 people, publishes religious materials and its founder, R.C. Sproule, broadcasts a radio show called Renewing Your Mind.
Dick is Sproule’s son-in-law.
The Orlando Sentinel was unable to reach Dick or the company’s attorney, Daniel Brodersen, for comment.
Vance, the blogger, is less well known. He won’t say where he’s from, except that he is in the United States. He launched his Web site — vancetribe.blogspot.com — in May and has a day job. He writes only about Ligonier.
He has criticized its choice of president — Dick — and the way the group acquired another religious publisher.
Vance learned about the lawsuit from the Sentinel.
“To prevent me from publishing, I view as a very serious breach of First Amendment rights,” he said by phone Friday.
Some plaintiffs sue bloggers, asking for things they would never dream of asking from a conventional news organization, said Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association.
“They think they can push bloggers around,” he said.
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