Reported / Citable
Background
Rachel Leviss sued Ariana Madix after Madix discovered sexually explicit recordings of Leviss on Tom Sandoval’s phone. Leviss alleged that Madix copied the videos to her own phone, sent them to Leviss, disclosed their contents to others, and thereby committed statutory nonconsensual-pornography, invasion-of-privacy, and emotional-distress torts. The dispute grew out of the widely publicized affair among cast members of Vanderpump Rules, but Leviss’s claims focused on how Madix obtained and handled the private recordings.
Madix responded with an anti-SLAPP motion—California’s special procedure for striking claims arising from protected speech or petitioning activity. She argued that the lawsuit concerned a public controversy and her communications about the affair. The trial court denied the motion at the first step, finding that Madix had not shown the challenged claims arose from protected activity.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal affirmed. The relevant acts supplying the elements of Leviss’s claims were Madix’s alleged accessing, copying, and distribution of private sexual videos. Those acts were not transformed into protected speech merely because the affair later became a major media story or because the participants were reality-television personalities.
The court distinguished between the public discussion of “Scandoval” and the allegedly unlawful conduct that Leviss actually targeted. A defendant cannot satisfy anti-SLAPP’s first step simply by identifying protected speech that supplies context, evidence, or resulting damages. Because Madix did not establish that the claims arose from constitutionally protected activity, the court did not reach whether Leviss had shown a probability of prevailing. Justice Wiley dissented, reasoning that the complaint mixed private-video allegations with damages flowing from a plainly public controversy and should be remanded for claim-by-claim sorting.
Key Takeaways
- Anti-SLAPP analysis focuses on the acts that supply the elements of each claim, not the fame of the parties or the publicity surrounding the dispute.
- Private acquisition or transmission of intimate material does not become protected activity merely because later commentary concerns a matter of public interest.
- Protected speech that is only evidence, context, or a source of damages ordinarily will not shift the anti-SLAPP burden.
- Defendants should isolate each alleged act and tie it directly to protected speech or petitioning instead of characterizing the lawsuit at a high level.
Why It Matters
The published decision gives California litigators a concrete example of the discipline required at anti-SLAPP step one. In privacy, entertainment, employment, and online-content disputes, public attention alone is not enough; the moving party must show that the liability-producing conduct itself is protected. Plaintiffs, meanwhile, should plead private conduct separately from later publicity so a court can see exactly what each claim targets.