Maxon v. Ottawa Publ’g Co.

The Clinic represented an amicus coalition that included the Citizen Media Law Project and a number of media and advocacy organizations, including Gannett Co., Inc., Hearst Corporation,Illinois Press Association, Online News Association, Public Citizen, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Tribune Company, in asking an Illinois appellate court to protect the rights of anonymous speakers online by imposing procedural safeguards before requiring that their identities be disclosed.  In their brief, the amici urged the appellate court to join the growing consensus among courts nationwide by holding that a party must demonstrate that its underlying claim has merit before the court will require the disclosure of an anonymous online speaker’s identity.