Judge Rejects Rolling Stone’s Plea to Throw Out UVA Defamation Case

According to NBC News, a judge has rejected Rolling Stone‘s request to throw out a defamation case brought by the accused students in the now-debunked University of Virginia rape case.

In a statement made on Thursday, a circuit court judge in Charlottesville, Virginia, held that Rolling Stone magazine’s article on an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia could reasonably be considered defamatory. This followed a request by the magazine’s attorney for the court to dismiss the case.

In 2012, several members of a fraternity at the University of Virginia were accused by the magazine of participating in a brutal gang rape:

The article centered on claims from a woman identified only as “Jackie” who claimed she had been the victim of a horrific gang rape that went on for hours in a bedroom of the Phi Kappa Psi during a fraternity party. After it was published, questions were raised about its veracity. Following an investigation, Rolling Stone admitted that the rape never took place.

Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com