Boren suit shows why Idaho’s anti-SLAPP law should be strengthened | Opinion
A yearslong defamation suit filed by Idaho billionaire and U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Michael Boren was recently dismissed yet again, as Nicole Blanchard reported.
Boren had allowed his lawsuit to hang over the heads of several people who had criticized him for more than a year without doing anything to actively pursue the case.
When the targets of Boren’s campaign of litigation attempted to get it dismissed for neglect, Boren attempted to reactivate it, saying he was very busy with his very important job, and his new lawyer was confused and waiting for the defendants to file something. District Judge Darren Simpson found these assertions less than credible, to put it politely, and told Boren to take a hike.
“The justifications asserted by Boren or Boren’s attorney show nothing more than pure neglect of the case,” Simpson wrote.
Boren’s original lawsuit, which charged that several people who criticized him for operating an air strip on his ranch near the Sawtooths, had earlier been dismissed by District Judge Stevan Thompson in 2022. Thompson characterized the lawsuit as bearing the hallmarks of a “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” or SLAPP suit, though the Idaho Supreme Court found that was as a bridge too far because Idaho did not have a law against SLAPP suits at the time.
Notably, Boren’s suit included not only four named individuals but 20 “John Does,” as Blanchard reported, individuals whose identity is not currently known but who may be identified through the course of litigation. This amounted to an implicit threat that anyone who criticized Boren could find themselves roped in.
SLAPP suits are a category of defamation suit brought not to remedy actual slander or libel, but to use the cumbersome, expensive civil legal system as cudgel to beat critics into silence.
SLAPP suits generally work when relatively wealthy people bring dubious defamation suits against ordinary people in response to criticism or other speech they don’t like. For the rich person, paying a lawyer to file and drag out the suit isn’t too expensive. But for the target of legal harassment, the potential costs and court time fighting the suit may be so high that they simply give up speaking — and this is the point.
We can’t know whether this is what Boren intended because his private motivations are known only to him. But it is clear that delaying things, dragging out the case and leaving the targets of their litigation in legal limbo is an available means of continuing to make life hell for people who voice views that the wealthy and litigious would rather not be expressed.
For this reason, Idaho’s anti-SLAPP law, which passed almost unanimously in 2025, should be strengthened.
Many anti-SLAPP laws throughout the nation allow for the target of a SLAPP suit include “SLAPPback” provisions. These allow defendants to recover so-called treble damages — equal to three times their total litigation costs. That means the more a plaintiff drags out the case, the more they risk having to pay the target of their legal harassment. Make the target of a SLAPP suit pay $50,000 defending themselves, and you might have to pay them $150,000 if they can demonstrate the suit was frivolous.
But Idaho’s anti-SLAPP law does not currently include treble damages. Lawmakers should add them.
Another option is to allow punitive damages — damages to be set by the judge against the plaintiff to deter them from abusing the legal system.
People like Boren might be much less likely to pursue SLAPP suits if they knew that they could not only have to cover the legal expenses of their adversaries, but could also have to actually stuff extra money in their pockets. It also means that targets of SLAPP suits who truly believe their statements were well justified would be incentivized to vigorously defend themselves rather than folding to cut costs.
And the U.S. still lacks an anti-SLAPP law at the federal level, something Idaho’s congressional delegation should remedy.
The court system is supposed to be a means of achieving fairness and justice. When it is allowed to be used as a tool of harassment, that undermines its legitimacy. Lawmakers should not allow that to happen.
Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman.