The DC Attorney General today moved to intervene in the Dean v. NBC Universal case “solely for the limited purpose of presenting argument to defend the validity of the Anti-SLAPP Act of 2010, a statute enacted by the unanimous vote of the DC Council and signed by Mayor Gray that sat before Congress for the required period of review and took legal effect earlier this year.”
This is the third suit in which the DC Attorney General has moved to intervene to defend the constitutionality of the statute. In August 2011, it moved to intervene in the Snyder suit. That action was dismissed by consent of the parties, however, before the Attorney General’s brief was submitted to the court.
Earlier this month, he moved to intervene in the 3M v. Boulter suit, where the plaintiff has also attacked the constitutionality of the statute on the basis that it violates the Home Rule. (While the plaintiff in Farah made a Home Rule argument in its opposition brief, the DC Attorney General has not moved, to date, to intervene in that suit).
As I have written before, the law strongly supports granting the DC Attorney General’s motion to intervene, and I anticipate that the Court will, again, grant its motion.
