A Mississippi judge on Wednesday lifted an order she had issued that required a newspaper to remove an editorial from its website, ending a case that had drawn national attention from press advocates who said the order was a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
The judge, Crystal Wise Martin of Hinds County Chancery Court, lifted the order after Clarksdale city officials voted earlier this week to abandon their libel lawsuit against the local paper, The Clarksdale Press Register.
On Thursday, Wyatt Emmerich, the president of Emmerich Newspapers, which owns the The Press Register, said that he planned to republish the editorial at the center of the case.
“As I warned them, it blew up in their face and it created a national outcry,” he said. “It embarrassed the city, and they realized what they had done was a mistake.”
Originally published on Feb. 8, with the headline “Secrecy, deception erode public trust,” the editorial accused city officials of failing to notify the news media before they voted to push for a tax increase in the Mississippi Legislature. It suggested they might have advanced the proposal because they “just want a few nights in Jackson to lobby for this idea — at public expense.”
Clarksdale city officials sued The Press Register for libel on Feb. 14, saying that the editorial “chilled and hindered” the mayor’s ability to lobby for the legislation in Jackson, the state capital.
On Feb. 18, Judge Martin granted the city’s request for a temporary restraining order and required the newspaper to remove the editorial from its website.
“The injury in this case is defamation against public figures through actual malice in reckless disregard of the truth and interferes with their legitimate function to advocate for legislation they believe would help their municipality during this current legislative cycle,” she wrote.
Groups that advocate for the news media fiercely criticized the order, calling it a clear violation of the right to free speech. The National Press Club, for instance, said that courts had made clear that “the government cannot silence a newspaper just because it doesn’t like what was printed.”
On Monday, Clarksdale officials voted to drop their lawsuit. The mayor, Chuck Espy, said that the city had decided to reverse course because Mr. Emmerich had offered to publish a “clarification” acknowledging that some of the language in the editorial was not clear.
“We are not here to fight with the newspaper,” Mr. Espy said. “We just want the truth to be printed, bad or good. That’s all we’ve asked for.”
Mr. Emmerich said that he had initially suggested publishing a clarification in hopes of persuading the city not to file a lawsuit. But he said that offer “went off the table and they knew that.”
David Rubin, a lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a legal advocacy group that represented The Press Register, said in a statement that the demise of the case was an important victory.
“The implications of this case go beyond one Mississippi town censoring its paper of record,” Mr. Rubin said. “If the government can get a court order silencing mere questions about its decisions, the First Amendment rights of all Americans are in jeopardy.”
