How to Make #MeToo Offenders Pay

People who accuse powerful people of sexual harassment and abuse should be better protected from retaliatory lawsuits.
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Getty. Last year, journalist Aebra Coe published a shocking story in Recht360a trade journal for those in the legal profession. The article, titled “‘I Suffered Silently’: Ex-Law Prof Allegedly Preyed on Students,” broke the news that Joshua Wright, then a law professor at George Mason University School of Law and a former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, had allegedly pressured female students and subordinates in the workplace into sexual relationships.

Two female attorneys, Elyse Dorsey and Angela Landry, participated in Title IX proceedings against Wright in 2021, before speaking to Coe. After the article was published, Wright sued Dorsey and Landry for $108 million, alleging that they defamed him in their statements to Recht360. Wright admitted to sleeping with his students and subordinates, but claimed the sex was consensual and that the two women were simply “scorned former lovers.” Wright’s lawsuit was initially dismissed by a Virginia judge who gave Wright the opportunity to file an amended complaint, which he did. That lawsuit was stalled, and the defamation claims are now scheduled for trial in March 2025. (A representative for Wright told me that this lawsuit survived motions to dismiss and that the essence of his complaint is not that Dorsey and Landry “outed” him, but that they allegedly lied about their consent and the assaults.)

Whether you find Wright’s behavior toward his students and employees a moral affront likely depends on whether you believe he abused his authority when he initiated and continued sexual relationships with the women who learned from him and worked for him. Power is having something that someone else needs (or wants), and so coercion is a common byproduct of status differences. This is true across contexts, from the interpersonal to the economic. The #MeToo movement has established this, but the movement has a long way to go: accused men can still punish their accusers with retaliatory lawsuits, which cost enormous amounts of time and money, even if the lawsuits are ultimately unsuccessful. It’s a tactic that puts power back in the hands of the accused and cools the climate around reporting sexual misconduct. Only public pressure and legislative action can prevent these lawsuits from undoing the progress made over the past decade in stamping out sexual exploitation in women’s work and education.

Read: Where #MeToo came from and where it’s going

Attorney Roberta Kaplan, co-founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, recently told me that defamation lawsuits were less talked about in the 1990s than they are today. But a surge in such lawsuits followed the rise of #MeToo. Wright’s petition isn’t new, but rather part of a genre of tactical lawsuits typically brought by well-connected, wealthy men against their female accusers. Similar legal action has been taken by many men since the advent of #MeToo in 2017, and not just in the United States: Men in Australia, China, India, Sweden, and France have all filed defamation lawsuits against women who have come forward with allegations of sexual assault.

Defending yourself in a defamation lawsuit can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, which can drag on for years as the cases work their way through the courts. These lawsuits are also intimidating and destabilizing. When I met Dorsey and Landry last October, Wright’s lawsuit had already thrown their lives into disarray. “I feel like I’ve been walking on eggshells for years, trying to avoid potential problems and stay out of trouble with him, and I’m still in this nightmare,” Dorsey told me. “I honestly feel like I’ve had a recurring nightmare for 10 years, ever since I was in law school, about all the things that would happen if I talked about what happened to me, and I’ve been living that nightmare for the past few years. It’s everything I feared and more. Even with all this going on, it never occurred to me that I could be sued for $108 million.”

Months later, Dorsey and Landry have racked up more expenses. During a recent phone call, Dorsey told me she was exhausted by the ongoing litigation. It was “horrible, like a real nightmare,” she said. “If I had known what was going to happen when I filed the Title IX complaint, I wouldn’t have done it.” Since the lawsuit began, Dorsey added, she has had to take time off from work to seek treatment for mental health issues. She told me she has paid legal fees that run into six figures.

Landry also took five weeks off from work to deal with the fallout from Wright’s lawsuit. It’s been stressful and overwhelming, she told me over the phone earlier this summer. “It’s just a big upheaval of your life.” She said she’s been paid $10,000 to $15,000 a month since last fall and doesn’t have much hope that she’ll see an end to the litigation anytime soon: “It’s emotionally very difficult to deal with … How is this going to end? When is it going to end? How much is this going to cost me?” For Landry, the costs could be even greater because of her circumstances: She’s nearly eight months pregnant and expects to spend her maternity leave dealing with the lawsuit. But she said she’ll come forward about Wright anyway, explaining that she wants to change the culture around abuse of power.

There are dozens of strategies available to lawmakers to protect survivors of sexual assault from defamation lawsuits aimed at silencing them. These cases can be treated as SLAPP cases, or strategic lawsuits against public participation, which are legal actions aimed at preventing plaintiffs from publishing their stories. Where anti-SLAPP laws exist, defendants can file a motion arguing that the plaintiff’s case meets the criteria for a SLAPP case and should be dismissed. But anti-SLAPP protections are available only in certain counties. Liz Chacko, a senior attorney at the National Women’s Law Center, told me in a recent phone call that only 35 states and territories have anti-SLAPP laws, and that some of those laws are weak: Dorsey said the anti-SLAPP law in Virginia, where Wright’s case was filed, isn’t strong enough to be useful in her case. Retaliatory defamation lawsuits are “just a tool to exploit the power imbalance between survivors” and the people they accuse, Chacko said. She laid out a three-point plan to reduce the impact of these complaints. First, all states should pass comprehensive anti-SLAPP laws. Chacko also proposed that Congress pass a federal anti-SLAPP law that would apply to retaliation in sexual harassment cases.

Read: #MeToo changed the world – except in court

Then there’s the possibility of cost-shifting, a practice that would saddle abusers with the costs of their defamation cases. Right now, there’s little stopping the accused from filing lawsuits against victims who speak out. “These guys don’t really expect to win,” Chacko told me. “They just know it’s expensive and it’s a distortion of reality.” Statutes that require the losing side to pay the winning side’s attorney fees could give abusers reason to think twice before jumping into a defamation case. (Many such provisions already exist in the law—losers in civil rights cases, for example, are sometimes required to pay the winners’ fees.) Kaplan proposed additional cost-shifting provisions that could help protect victims: Statutes could require that fees be paid at a reasonable rate, that they be paid up front and held in escrow, or that they be doubled in these cases. These measures could not only discourage powerful men from filing defamation claims; They could also encourage victims to come forward, knowing that their costs will likely be reimbursed.

Some might argue—correctly—that the rights of the accused are also important, and that legislation intended to protect plaintiffs could potentially manipulate legitimate legal proceedings against plaintiffs. But anti-SLAPP legislation only guarantees that defendants can file a motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ lawsuits as SLAPPs, not that judges will universally rule in defendants’ favor. Nor would it shift costs to plaintiffs who win their cases. Anti-SLAPP legislation is not aimed at universally stamping out defamation suits, but only those cases brought strategically to silence parties who publicly announce their abuse.

Activists and lawmakers have proposed other approaches to protecting women from retaliation for speaking out about their experiences with sexual misconduct. In 2020, New York expanded its anti-SLAPP statute, broadening both what is in the public interest and what meets the criteria for public participation. New York State Senator Brad Hoylman sponsored the bill, saying that “this broken system has resulted in journalists, consumer advocates, sexual assault survivors and others being dragged through the courts in retaliatory legal proceedings designed only to silence them.” A California law passed last year not only requires a losing plaintiff to pay both sides’ legal fees, but also raises the standard for proving defamation — meaning plaintiffs must prove that the statements they characterize as defamatory were made with actual malice, not merely negligence. Dorsey cited statutes that require plaintiffs alleging defamation to prove they are likely to prevail on the merits, or to provide evidence of their defamation claims. By introducing this evidence earlier in the process, she said, these cases would be shortened.

“I think it’s really important that we keep talking about it and that we don’t silence ourselves,” Dorsey said. “Because if we do, junior associates who are going through this[are]not going to feel like they can come forward. And I’ve talked to so many older women in the profession who had their own experiences decades ago and felt like they couldn’t come forward.” Dorsey said she doesn’t want to spend decades in her career in a professional culture that remains unchanged. She wants it to be better than she found it. That may depend on how the laws governing SLAPP lawsuits change and whether victim advocates can win further legal victories in their jurisdictions. Workers and students everywhere have a stake in that hope.