A Delaware judge ruled this week that the defamation lawsuit against the sports media outlet Deadspin will be allowed to move forward.
In November of last year, Deadspin generated backlash when it featured an article from Carron J. Phillips attacking a 9-year-old wearing face paint and an Indian headdress at a Chiefs game.“The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress,” the headline read. The article went even further:
It takes a lot to disrespect two groups of people at once. But on Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, a Kansas City Chiefs fan found a way to hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time.
It was as if Jon Gruden’s emails had come to life. The image of a Chiefs fan in Black face wearing a Native headdress during a road game leads to so many unanswered questions.
The article further asked questions like why the camera gave the fan attention or why the fan’s parents allowed him to dress up like that. The author also only showed the side of the boy’s face that had been painted black, not showing the other side of his face that had been painted red.
Raul and Shannon Armenta, parents of the then-nine-year-old Holden, filed a defamation lawsuit this past February against Deadspin, which the outlet motioned to dismiss. On Monday, Superior Court Judge Sean Lugg denied that motion, allowing the lawsuit to go forward while agreeing that Deadspin posted “provable false assertions” that appeared as facts, not opinions.
“Deadspin published an image of a child displaying his passionate fandom as a backdrop for its critique of the NFL’s diversity efforts and, in its description of the child, crossed the fine line protecting its speech from defamation claims,” the judge wrote, as reported by Fox News.
“Having reviewed the complaint, the court concludes that Deadspin’s statements accusing [Holden] of wearing black face and Native headdress ‘to hate black people and the Native American at the same time,’ and that he was taught this hatred by his parents, are provable false assertions of fact and are therefore actionable,” Lugg added.
In the original complaint, the family said they received death threats, including a pledge to kill someone with a “wood chipper,” and that the father’s professional life suffered greatly, making him a “pariah at work, forcing the family to consider moving out of state.”
“They have branded a nine-year-old child with false allegations that will live forever online. H.A. has already suffered significantly—his test scores and grades have dropped in school, and he has shown emotional damage from the onslaught of negative attention,” it said.
The article on Deadspin still remains with all photos of the boy removed under the headline: “The NFL Must Ban Native Headdress And Culturally Insensitive Face Paint in the Stands.” It also issued a correction stating that the publication “regrets” that the piece’s focus centered on a singular fan.
“We regret any suggestion that we were attacking the fan or his family. To that end, our story was updated on Dec. 7 to remove any photos, tweets, links, or otherwise identifying information about the fan. We have also revised the headline to better reflect the substance of the story,” it reads.